I
American Certitudes
When one talks to an American of his national purpose he seems a little at a loss; if one speaks of his national destiny, he responds with alacrity1. I make this generalization2 on the usual narrow foundations, but so the impression comes to me.
Until this present generation, indeed until within a couple of decades, it is not very evident that Americans did envisage3 any national purpose at all, except in so far as there was a certain solicitude4 not to be cheated out of an assured destiny. A sort of optimistic fatalism possessed5 them. They had, and mostly it seems they still have, a tremendous sense of sustained and assured growth, and it is not altogether untrue that one is told—I have been told—such things as that "America is a great country, sir," that its future is gigantic and that it is already (and going to be more and more so) the greatest country on earth.
[Pg 22]
I am not the sort of Englishman who questions that. I do so regard that much as obvious and true that it seems to me even a little undignified, as well as a little overbearing, for Americans to insist upon it so; I try to go on as soon as possible to the question just how my interlocutor shapes that gigantic future and what that world predominance is finally to do for us in England and all about the world. So far, I must insist, I haven't found anything like an idea. I have looked for it in books, in papers, in speeches and now I am going to look for it in America. At the most I have found vague imaginings that correspond to that first or monstrous6 stage in the scheme of prophetic development I sketched7 in my opening.
There is often no more than a volley of rhetorical blank-cartridge. So empty is it of all but sound that I have usually been constrained8 by civility from going on to a third enquiry;—
"And what are you, sir, doing in particular, to assist and enrich this magnificent and quite indefinable Destiny of which you so evidently feel yourself a part?"...
That seems to be really no unjust rendering9 of the conscious element of the American outlook as one finds it, for example, in these nice-looking and pleasant-mannered fellow-passengers upon the Carmania upon whom I fasten with leading questions and experimental remarks. One exception I discover—a pleasant New York clubman who has[Pg 23] doubts of this and that. The discipline and sense of purpose in Germany has laid hold upon him. He seems to be, in contrast with his fellow-countrymen, almost pessimistically aware that the American ship of state is after all a mortal ship and liable to leakages10. There are certain problems and dangers he seems to think that may delay, perhaps even prevent, an undamaged arrival in that predestined port, that port too resplendent for the eye to rest upon; a Chinese peril11, he thinks has not been finally dealt with, "race suicide" is not arrested for all that it is scolded in a most valiant12 and virile13 manner, and there are adverse14 possibilities in the immigrant, in the black, the socialist15, against which he sees no guarantee. He sees huge danger in the development and organization of the new finance and no clear promise of a remedy. He finds the closest parallel between the American Republic and Rome before the coming of Imperialism16. But these other Americans have no share in his pessimisms. They may confess to as much as he does in the way of dangers, admit there are occasions for calking, a need of stopping quite a number of possibilities if the American Idea is to make its triumphant17 entry at last into that port of blinding accomplishment18, but, apart from a few necessary preventive proposals, I do not perceive any extensive sense of anything whatever to be done, anything to be shaped and thought out and made in the sense of a national determination to a designed and specified19 end.
[Pg 24]
II
A Symbol of Progress
There are, one must admit, tremendous justifications20 for the belief in a sort of automatic ascent21 of American things to unprecedented22 magnificences, an ascent so automatic that indeed one needn't bother in the slightest to keep the whole thing going. For example, consider this, last year's last-word in ocean travel in which I am crossing, the Carmania with its unparalleled steadfastness23, its racing24, tireless great turbines, its vast population of 3244 souls! It has on the whole a tremendous effect of having come by fate and its own forces. One forgets that any one planned it, much of it indeed has so much the quality of moving, as the planets move, in the very nature of things. You go aft and see the wake tailing away across the blue ridges25, you go forward and see the cleft26 water, lift protestingly, roll back in an indignant crest27, own itself beaten and go pouring by in great foaming28 waves on either hand, you see nothing, you hear nothing of the toiling29 engines, the reeking30 stokers, the effort and the stress below; you beat west and west, as the sun does and it might seem with nearly the same independence of any living man's help or opposition31. Equally so does it seem this great, gleaming, confident thing of power and metal came inevitably32 out of the past and will lead on to still more shining, still swifter and securer monsters in the future.
[Pg 25]
One sees in the perspective of history, first the little cockle-shells of Columbus, the comings and goings of the precarious33 Tudor adventurers, the slow uncertain shipping34 of colonial days. Says Sir George Trevelyan in the opening of his American Revolution, that then—it is still not a century and a half ago!—
"a man bound for New York, as he sent his luggage on board at Bristol, would willingly have compounded for a voyage lasting35 as many weeks as it now lasts days.... Adams, during the height of the war, hurrying to France in the finest frigate36 Congress could place at his disposal ... could make not better speed than five and forty days between Boston and Bordeaux. Lord Carlisle ... was six weeks between port and port; tossed by gales37 which inflicted38 on his brother Commissioners39 agonies such as he forbore to make a matter of joke even to George Selwyn.... How humbler individuals fared.... They would be kept waiting weeks on the wrong side of the water for a full complement40 of passengers and weeks more for a fair wind, and then beating across in a badly found tub with a cargo41 of millstones and old iron rolling about below, they thought themselves lucky if they came into harbor a month after their private store of provisions had run out and carrying a budget of news as stale as the ship's provisions."
Even in the time of Dickens things were by no measure more than half-way better. I have with me to enhance my comfort by this aided retrospect42, his American Notes. His crossing lasted eighteen days and his boat was that "far-famed American steamer," the Britannia (the first of the long succession of Cunarders, of which this Carmania[Pg 26] is the latest); his return took fifty days, and was a jovial43 home-coming under sail. It's the journey out gives us our contrast. He had the "state-room" of the period and very unhappy he was in it, as he testifies in a characteristically mounting passage.
"That this state-room had been specially44 engaged for 'Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady,' was rendered sufficiently45 clear even to my scared intellect by a very small manuscript, announcing the fact, which was pinned on a very flat quilt, covering a very thin mattress46, spread like a surgical47 plaster on a most inaccessible48 shelf. But that this was the state-room, concerning which Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady, had held daily and nightly conferences for at least four months preceding; that this could by any possibility be that small snug49 chamber50 of the imagination, which Charles Dickens, Esquire, with the spirit of prophecy strong upon him, had always foretold51 would contain at least one little sofa, and which his Lady, with a modest and yet most magnificent sense of its limited dimensions, had from the first opined would not hold more than two enormous portmanteaus in some odd corner out of sight (portmanteaus which could now no more be got in at the door, not to say stowed away, than a giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a flower-pot): that this utterly52 impracticable, thoroughly53 preposterous54 box, had the remotest reference to, or connection with, those chaste55 and pretty bowers56, sketched in a masterly hand, in the highly varnished57, lithographic plan, hanging up in the agent's counting-house in the City of London: that this room of state, in short, could be anything but a pleasant fiction and cheerful jest of the Captain's, invented and put in practice for the better relish58 and enjoyment59 of the real state-room presently to be disclosed: these were truths which I really could not bring my mind at all to bear upon or comprehend."
[Pg 27]
So he precludes60 his two weeks and a half of vile61 weather in this paddle boat of the middle ages (she carried a "formidable" multitude of no less than eighty-six saloon passengers) and goes on to describe such experiences as this;
"About midnight we shipped a sea, which forced its way through the skylights, burst open the doors above, and came raging and roaring down into the ladies' cabin, to the unspeakable consternation62 of my wife and a little Scotch63 lady.... They, and the handmaid before mentioned, being in such ecstacies of fear that I scarcely knew what to do with them, I naturally bethought myself of some restorative or comfortable cordial; and nothing better occurring to me, at the moment, than hot brandy-and-water, I procured64 a tumblerful without delay. It being impossible to stand or sit without holding on, they were all heaped together in one corner of a long sofa—a fixture65 extending entirely66 across the cabin—where they clung to each other in momentary67 expectation of being drowned. When I approached this place with my specific, and was about to administer it with many consolatory68 expressions, to the nearest sufferer, what was my dismay to see them all roll slowly down to the other end! and when I staggered to that end, and held out the glass once more, how immensely baffled were my good intentions by the ship giving another lurch69, and their rolling back again! I suppose I dodged70 them up and down this sofa, for at least a quarter of an hour, without reaching them once; and by the time I did catch them, the brandy-and-water was diminished, by constant spilling, to a teaspoonful71. To complete the group, it is necessary to recognize in this disconcerted dodger72, an individual very pale from sea-sickness, who had shaved his beard and brushed his hair last at Liverpool; and whose only articles of dress (linen not included) were a pair of dreadnought trousers; a blue jacket, formerly73 admired upon the Thames at Richmond; no stockings; and one slipper74."
[Pg 28]
It gives one a momentary sense of superiority to the great master to read that. One surveys one's immediate75 surroundings and compares them with his. One says almost patronizingly: "Poor old Dickens, you know, really did have too awful a time!" The waves are high now, and getting higher, dark-blue waves foam-crested; the waves haven't altered—except relatively—but one isn't even sea-sick. At the most there are squeamish moments for the weaker brethren. One looks down on these long white-crested undulations thirty feet or so of rise and fall, as we look down the side of a sky-scraper into a tumult76 in the street.
We displace thirty thousand tons of water instead of twelve hundred, we can carry 521 first and second class passengers, a crew of 463, and 2260 emigrants77 below....
We're a city rather than a ship, our funnels78 go up over the height of any reasonable church spire79, and you need walk the main-deck from end to end and back only four times to do a mile. Any one who has been to London and seen Trafalgar Square will get our dimensions perfectly80, when he realizes that we should only squeeze into that finest site in Europe, diagonally, dwarfing81 the National Gallery, St. Martin's Church, hotels and every other building there out of existence, our funnels towering five feet higher than Nelson on his column. As one looks down on it all from the boat-deck one has a social microcosm, we could set up as a small modern[Pg 29] country and renew civilization even if the rest of the world was destroyed. We've the plutocracy82 up here, there is a middle class on the second-class deck and forward a proletariat—the proles much in evidence—complete. It's possible to go slumming aboard.... We have our daily paper, too, printed aboard, and all the latest news by marconigram....
Never was anything of this sort before, never. Caligula's shipping it is true (unless it was Constantine's) did, as Mr. Cecil Torr testifies, hold a world record until the nineteenth century and he quotes Pliny for thirteen hundred tons—outdoing the Britannia—and Moschion for cabins and baths and covered vine-shaded walks and plants in pots. But from 1840 onward83, we have broken away into a new scale for life. This Carmania isn't the largest ship nor the finest, nor is it to be the last. Greater ships are to follow and greater. The scale of size, the scale of power, the speed and dimensions of things about us alter remorselessly—to some limit we cannot at present descry84.
III
Is Progress Inevitable85?
It is the development of such things as this, it is this dramatically abbreviated86 perspective from those pre-Reformation caravels to the larger, larger, larger of the present vessels87, one must blame for one's illusions.[Pg 30] One is led unawares to believe that this something called Progress is a natural and necessary and secular88 process, going on without the definite will of man, carrying us on quite independently of us; one is led unawares to forget that it is after all from the historical point of view only a sudden universal jolting89 forward in history, an affair of two centuries at most, a process for the continuance of which we have no sort of guarantee. Most western Europeans have this delusion90 of automatic progress in things badly enough, but with Americans it seems to be almost fundamental. It is their theory of the Cosmos91 and they no more think of inquiring into the sustaining causes of the progressive movement than they would into the character of the stokers hidden away from us in this great thing somewhere—the officers alone know where.
I am happy to find this blind confidence very well expressed for example in an illustrated92 magazine article by Mr. Edgar Saltus, "New York from the Flat-iron," that a friend has put in my hand to prepare me for the wonders to come. Mr. Saltus writes with an eloquent93 joy of his vision of Broadway below, Broadway that is now "barring trade-routes, the largest commercial stretch on this planet." So late as Dickens's visit it was scavenged by roving untended herds94 of gaunt, brown, black-blotched pigs. He writes of lower Fifth Avenue and upper Fifth Avenue, of Madison Square and its tower, of[Pg 31] sky-scrapers and sky-scrapers and sky-scrapers round and about the horizon. (I am to have a tremendous view of them to-morrow as we steam up from the Narrows.) And thus Mr. Saltus proceeds,—
"As you lean and gaze from the toppest floors on houses below, which from those floors seem huts, it may occur to you that precisely95 as these huts were once regarded as supreme96 achievements, so, one of these days, from other and higher floors, the Flat-iron may seem a hut itself. Evolution has not halted. Undiscernibly but indefatigably97, always it is progressing. Its final term is not existing buildings, nor in existing man. If humanity sprang from gorillas98, from humanity gods shall proceed."
The rule of three in excelsis!
"The story of Olympus is merely a tale of what might have been. That which might have been may yet come to pass. Even now could the old divinities, hushed forevermore, awake, they would be perplexed99 enough to see how mortals have exceeded them.... In Fifth Avenue inns they could get fairer fare than ambrosia100, and behold101 women beside whom Venus herself would look provincial102 and Juno a frump. The spectacle of electricity tamed and domesticated103 would surprise them not a little, the elevated quite as much, the Flat-iron still more. At sight of the latter they would recall the Titans with whom once they warred, and sink to their sun-red seas outfaced.
"In this same measure we have succeeded in exceeding them, so will posterity104 surpass what we have done. Evolution may be slow, it achieved an unrecognized advance when it devised buildings such as this. It is demonstrable that small rooms breed small thoughts. It will be demonstrable that, as buildings ascend105, so do ideas. It is mental progress that sky-scrapers engender106. From these parturi[Pg 32]tions gods may really proceed—beings, that is, who, could we remain long enough to see them, would regard us as we regard the apes...."
Mr. Saltus writes, I think, with a very typical American accent. Most Americans think like that and all of them I fancy feel like it. Just in that spirit a later-empire Roman might have written apropos107 the gigantic new basilica of Constantine the Great (who was also, one recalls, a record-breaker in ship-building) and have compared it with the straitened proportions of C?sar's Forum108 and the meagre relics109 of republican Rome. So too (absit omen) he might have swelled110 into prophecy and sounded the true modern note.
One hears that modern note everywhere nowadays where print spreads, but from America with fewer undertones than anywhere. Even I find it, ringing clear, as a thing beyond disputing, as a thing as self-evident as sunrise again and again in the expressed thought of Mr. Henry James.
But you know this progress isn't guaranteed. We have all indeed been carried away completely by the up-rush of it all. To me now this Carmania seems to typify the whole thing. What matter it if there are moments when one reflects on the mysterious smallness and it would seem the ungrowing quality of the human content of it all? We are, after all, astonishingly like flies on a machine that has got loose. No matter. Those people on the main-deck are the oddest crowd, strange Oriental-[Pg 33]looking figures with Astrakhan caps, hook-noses, shifty eyes, and indisputably dirty habits, bold-eyed, red-capped, expectorating women, quaint111 and amazingly dirty children; Tartars there are too, and Cossacks, queer wraps, queer head-dresses, a sort of greasy112 picturesqueness113 over them all. They use the handkerchief solely114 as a head covering. Their deck is disgusting with fragments of food, with egg-shells they haven't had the decency115 to throw over-board. Collectively they have—an atmosphere. They're going where we're going, wherever that is. What matters it? What matters it, too, if these people about me in the artistic116 apartment talk nothing but trivialities derived117 from the Daily Bulletin, think nothing but trivialities, are, except in the capacity of paying passengers, the most ineffectual gathering118 of human beings conceivable? What matters it that there is no connection, no understanding whatever between them and that large and ominous119 crowd a plank120 or so and a yard or so under our feet? Or between themselves for the matter of that? What matters it if nobody seems to be struck by the fact that we are all, the three thousand two hundred of us so extraordinarily121 got together into this tremendous machine, and that not only does nobody inquire what it is has got us together in this astonishing fashion and why, but that nobody seems to feel that we are together in any sort of way at all? One looks up at the smoke-pouring funnels and back at the foaming wake. It will be[Pg 34] all right. Aren't we driving ahead westward122 at a pace of four hundred and fifty miles a day?
And twenty or thirty thousand other souls, mixed and stratified, on great steamers ahead of us, or behind, are driving westward too. That there's no collective mind apparent in it at all, worth speaking about is so much the better. That only shows its Destiny, its Progress as inevitable as gravitation. I could almost believe it, as I sit quietly writing here by a softly shaded light in this elegantly appointed drawing-room, as steady as though I was in my native habitat on dry land instead of hurrying almost fearfully, at twenty knots an hour, over a tumbling empty desert of blue waves under a windy sky. But, only a little while ago, I was out forward alone, looking at that. Everything was still except for the remote throbbing123 of the engines and the nearly effaced124 sound of a man, singing in a strange tongue, that came from the third-class gangway far below. The sky was clear, save for a few black streamers of clouds, Orion hung very light and large above the waters, and a great new moon, still visibly holding its dead predecessor125 in its crescent, sank near him. Between the sparse126 great stars were deep blue spaces, unfathomed distances.
Out there I had been reminded of space and time. Out there the ship was just a hastening ephemeral fire-fly that had chanced to happen across the eternal tumult of the winds and sea.
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1
alacrity
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| n.敏捷，轻快，乐意 | |
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generalization
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| n.普遍性，一般性，概括 | |
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envisage
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| v.想象，设想，展望，正视 | |
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solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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sketched
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| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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constrained
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| adj.束缚的,节制的 | |
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rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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leakages
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| 泄露； 漏( leakage的名词复数 )； 漏出； 漏出物； 渗漏物 | |
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peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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valiant
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| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
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virile
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| adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的 | |
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adverse
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| adj.不利的；有害的；敌对的，不友好的 | |
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socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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imperialism
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| n.帝国主义，帝国主义政策 | |
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triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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accomplishment
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| n.完成，成就，（pl.）造诣，技能 | |
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specified
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| adj.特定的 | |
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justifications
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| 正当的理由，辩解的理由( justification的名词复数 ) | |
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ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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steadfastness
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| n.坚定，稳当 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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ridges
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| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
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cleft
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| n.裂缝；adj.裂开的 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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foaming
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| adj.布满泡沫的；发泡 | |
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toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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reeking
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的现在分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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precarious
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| adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的 | |
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shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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frigate
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| n.护航舰，大型驱逐舰 | |
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gales
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| 龙猫 | |
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inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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commissioners
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| n.专员( commissioner的名词复数 )；长官；委员；政府部门的长官 | |
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complement
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| n.补足物，船上的定员；补语；vt.补充，补足 | |
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cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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jovial
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| adj.快乐的，好交际的 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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surgical
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| adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的 | |
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inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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foretold
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| v.预言，预示( foretell的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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53
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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54
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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chaste
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| adj.贞洁的；有道德的；善良的；简朴的 | |
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56
bowers
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| n.（女子的）卧室( bower的名词复数 )；船首锚；阴凉处；鞠躬的人 | |
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varnished
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| 浸渍过的，涂漆的 | |
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58
relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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60
precludes
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| v.阻止( preclude的第三人称单数 )；排除；妨碍；使…行不通 | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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64
procured
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| v.（努力）取得， （设法）获得( procure的过去式和过去分词 )；拉皮条 | |
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fixture
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| n.固定设备；预定日期；比赛时间；定期存款 | |
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66
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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consolatory
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| adj.慰问的，可藉慰的 | |
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69
lurch
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| n.突然向前或旁边倒；v.蹒跚而行 | |
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70
dodged
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| v.闪躲( dodge的过去式和过去分词 )；回避 | |
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71
teaspoonful
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| n.一茶匙的量；一茶匙容量 | |
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72
dodger
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| n.躲避者；躲闪者；广告单 | |
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73
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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slipper
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| n.拖鞋 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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76
tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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emigrants
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| n.（从本国移往他国的）移民( emigrant的名词复数 ) | |
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funnels
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| 漏斗( funnel的名词复数 )； （轮船，火车等的）烟囱 | |
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spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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dwarfing
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| n.矮化病 | |
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82
plutocracy
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| n.富豪统治 | |
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83
onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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descry
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| v.远远看到；发现；责备 | |
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85
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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abbreviated
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| adj. 简短的，省略的 动词abbreviate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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secular
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| n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的 | |
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jolting
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| adj.令人震惊的 | |
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delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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cosmos
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| n.宇宙；秩序，和谐 | |
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illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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herds
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| 兽群( herd的名词复数 )； 牧群； 人群； 群众 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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indefatigably
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| adv.不厌倦地，不屈不挠地 | |
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98
gorillas
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| n.大猩猩( gorilla的名词复数 )；暴徒，打手 | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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100
ambrosia
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| n.神的食物；蜂食 | |
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101
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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102
provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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103
domesticated
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| adj.喜欢家庭生活的；（指动物）被驯养了的v.驯化( domesticate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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104
posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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105
ascend
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| vi.渐渐上升，升高；vt.攀登，登上 | |
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106
engender
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| v.产生，引起 | |
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107
apropos
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| adv.恰好地；adj.恰当的；关于 | |
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108
forum
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| n.论坛，讨论会 | |
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109
relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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110
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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111
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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112
greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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113
picturesqueness
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114
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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115
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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116
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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117
derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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118
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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119
ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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120
plank
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| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 | |
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121
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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122
westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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123
throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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124
effaced
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| v.擦掉( efface的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；超越；使黯然失色 | |
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125
predecessor
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| n.前辈，前任 | |
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126
sparse
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| adj.稀疏的，稀稀落落的，薄的 | |
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