At the side of the rectory, churchward, is a little grass lawn with low hedges and at the side of that two wild plum trees, that are practically always in white blossom. Underneath3 them is a rustic4 table and chairs, and it is here that you may see Rural Dean Drone, the incumbent5 of the Church of England Church, sitting, in the chequered light of the plum tress that is neither sun nor shadow. Generally you will find him reading, and when I tell you that at the end of the grass plot where the hedge is highest there is a yellow bee hive with seven bees that belong to Dean Drone, you will realize that it is only fitting that the Dean is reading in the Greek. For what better could a man be reading beneath the blossom of the plum trees, within the very sound of the bees, than the Pastorals of Theocritus? The light trash of modern romance might put a man to sleep in such a spot, but with such food for reflection as Theocritus, a man may safely close his eyes and muse6 on what he reads without fear of dropping into slumber7.
Some men, I suppose, terminate their education when they leave their college. Not so Dean Drone. I have often heard him say that if he couldn't take a book in the Greek out on the lawn in a spare half hour, he would feel lost. It's a certain activity of the brain that must be stilled somehow. The Dean, too, seemed to have a native feeling for the Greek language. I have often heard people who might sit with him on the lawn, ask him to translate some of it. But he always refused. One couldn't translate it, he said. It lost so much in the translation that it was better not to try. It was far wiser not to attempt it. If you undertook to translate it, there was something gone, something missing immediately. I believe that many classical scholars feel this way, and like to read the Greek just as it is, without the hazard of trying to put it into so poor a medium as English. So that when Dean Drone said that he simply couldn't translate it, I believe he was perfectly9 sincere.
Sometimes, indeed, he would read it aloud. That was another matter. Whenever, for example, Dr. Gallagher—I mean, of course, old Dr. Gallagher, not the young doctor (who was always out in the country in the afternoon)—would come over and bring his latest Indian relics10 to show to the Dean, the latter always read to him a passage or two. As soon as the doctor laid his tomahawk on the table, the Dean would reach for his Theocritus. I remember that on the day when Dr. Gallagher brought over the Indian skull11 that they had dug out of the railway embankment, and placed it on the rustic table, the Dean read to him so long from Theocritus that the doctor, I truly believe, dozed12 off in his chair. The Dean had to wait and fold his hands with the book across his knee, and close his eyes till the doctor should wake up again. And the skull was on the table between them, and from above the plum blossoms fluttered down, till they made flakes13 on it as white as Dr. Gallagher's hair.
I don't want you to suppose that the Rev14. Mr. Drone spent the whole of his time under the trees. Not at all. In point of fact, the rector's life was one round of activity which lie himself might deplore15 but was powerless to prevent. He had hardly sat down beneath the trees of an afternoon after his mid-day meal when there was the Infant Class at three, and after that, with scarcely an hour between, the Mothers' Auxiliary16 at five, and the next morning the Book Club, and that evening the Bible Study Class, and the next morning the Early Workers' Guild17 at eleven-thirty. The whole week was like that, and if one found time to sit down for an hour or so to recuperate18 it was the most one could do. After all, if a busy man spends the little bit of leisure that he gets in advanced classical study, there is surely no harm in it. I suppose, take it all in all, there wasn't a busier man than the Rural Dean among the Anglican clergy19 of the diocese.
If the Dean ever did snatch a half-day from his incessant20 work, he spent it in fishing. But not always that, for as likely as not, instead of taking a real holiday he would put in the whole afternoon amusing the children and the boys that he knew, by making kites and toys and clockwork steamboats for them.
It was fortunate for the Dean that he had the strange interest and aptitude21 for mechanical advices which he possessed22, or otherwise this kind of thing would have been too cruel an imposition. But the Rev. Mr. Drone had a curious liking23 for machinery24. I think I never heard him preach a better sermon than the one on Aeroplanes (Lo, what now see you on high Jeremiah Two).
So it was that he spent two whole days making a kite with Chinese wings for Teddy Moore, the photographer's son, and closed down the infant class for forty-eight hours so that Teddy Moore should not miss the pleasure of flying it, or rather seeing it flown. It is foolish to trust a Chinese kite to the hands of a young child.
In the same way the Dean made a mechanical top for little Marjorie Trewlaney, the cripple, to see spun25: it would have been unwise to allow the afflicted26 girl to spin it. There was no end to the things that Mr. Drone could make, and always for the children. Even when he was making the sand-clock for poor little Willie Yodel (who died, you know) the Dean went right on with it and gave it to another child with just the same pleasure. Death, you know, to the clergy is a different thing from what it is to us. The Dean and Mr. Gingham used often to speak of it as they walked through the long grass of the new cemetery, the Necropolis. And when your Sunday walk is to your wife's grave, as the Dean's was, perhaps it seems different to anybody.
The Church of England Church, I said; stood close to the rectory, a tall, sweeping27 church, and inside a great reach of polished cedar28 beams that ran to the point of the roof. There used to stand on the same spot the little stone church that all the grown-up people in Mariposa still remember, a quaint29 little building in red and grey stone. About it was the old cemetery, but that was all smoothed out later into the grass plot round the new church, and the headstones laid out flat, and no new graves have been put there for ever so long. But the Mariposa children still walk round and read the headstones lying flat in the grass and look for the old ones,—because some of them are ever so old—forty or fifty years back.
Nor are you to think from all this that the Dean was not a man with serious perplexities. You could easily convince yourself of the contrary. For if you watched the Rev. Mr. Drone as he sat reading in the Greek, you would notice that no very long period every passed without his taking up a sheet or two of paper that lay between the leaves of the Theocritus and that were covered close with figures.
And these the Dean would lay upon the rustic table, and he would add them up forwards and backwards30, going first up the column and then down it to see that nothing had been left out, and then down it again to see what it was that must have been left out.
Mathematics, you will understand, were not the Dean's forte31. They never were the forte of the men who had been trained at the little Anglican college with the clipped hedges and the cricket ground, where Rupert Drone had taken the gold medal in Greek fifty-two years ago. You will see the medal at any time lying there in its open box on the rectory table, in case of immediate8 need. Any of the Drone girls, Lilian, or Jocelyn, or Theodora, would show it to you. But, as I say, mathematics were not the rector's forte, and he blamed for it (in a Christian32 spirit, you will understand) the memory of his mathematical professor, and often he spoke33 with great bitterness. I have often heard him say that in his opinion the colleges ought to dismiss, of course in a Christian spirit, all the professors who are not, in the most reverential sense of the term, fit for their jobs.
No doubt many of the clergy of the diocese had suffered more or less just as the Dean had from lack of mathematical training. But the Dean always felt that his own case was especially to be lamented34. For you see, if a man is trying to make a model aeroplane—for a poor family in the lower part of the town—and he is brought to a stop by the need of reckoning the coefficient of torsion of cast-iron rods, it shows plainly enough that the colleges are not truly filling their divine mission.
But the figures that I speak of were not those of the model aeroplane. These were far more serious. Night and day they had been with the rector now for the best part of ten years, and they grew, if anything, more intricate.
If, for example, you try to reckon the debt of a church—a large church with a great sweep of polished cedar beams inside, for the special glorification35 of the All Powerful, and with imported tiles on the roof for the greater glory of Heaven and with stained-glass windows for the exaltation of the All Seeing—if, I say, you try to reckon up the debt on such a church and figure out its interest and its present worth, less a fixed36 annual payment, it makes a pretty complicated sum. Then if you try to add to this the annual cost of insurance, and deduct37 from it three-quarters of a stipend38, year by year, and then suddenly remember that three-quarters is too much, because you have forgotten the boarding-school fees of the littlest of the Drones (including French, as an extra—she must have it, all the older girls did), you have got a sum that pretty well defies ordinary arithmetic. The provoking part of it was that the Dean knew perfectly well that with the help of logarithms he could have done the thing in a moment. But at the Anglican college they had stopped short at that very place in the book. They had simply explained that Logos was a word and Arithmos a number, which at the time, seemed amply sufficient.
So the Dean was perpetually taking out his sheets of figures, and adding them upwards39 and downwards40, and they never came the same. Very often Mr. Gingham, who was a warden41, would come and sit beside the rector and ponder over the figures, and Mr. Drone would explain that with a book of logarithms you could work it out in a moment. You would simply open the book and run your finger up the columns (he illustrated42 exactly the way in which the finger was moved), and there you were. Mr. Gingham said that it was a caution, and that logarithms (I quote his exact phrase) must be a terror.
Very often, too, Nivens, the lawyer, who was a sidesman, and Mullins, the manager of the Exchange Bank, who was the chairman of the vestry, would come and take a look, at the figures. But they never could make much of them, because the stipend part was not a matter that one could discuss.
Mullins would notice the item for a hundred dollars due on fire insurance and would say; as a business man, that surely that couldn't be fire insurance, and the Dean would say surely not, and change it: and Mullins would say surely there couldn't be fifty dollars for taxes, because there weren't any taxes, and the Dean would admit that of course it couldn't be for the taxes. In fact, the truth is that the Dean's figures were badly mixed, and the fault lay indubitably with the mathematical professor of two generations back.
It was always Mullins's intention some day to look into the finances of the church, the more so as his father had been with Dean Drone at the little Anglican college with the cricket ground. But he was a busy man. As he explained to the rector himself, the banking43 business nowadays is getting to be such that a banker can hardly call even his Sunday mornings his own. Certainly Henry Mullins could not. They belonged largely to Smith's Hotel, and during the fishing season they belonged away down the lake, so far away that practically no one, unless it was George Duff of the Commercial Bank, could see them.
But to think that all this trouble had come through the building of the new church.
That was the bitterness of it.
For the twenty-five years that Rural Dean Drone had preached in the little stone church, it had been his one aim, as he often put it in his sermons, to rear a larger Ark in Gideon. His one hope had been to set up a greater Evidence, or, very simply stated, to kindle44 a Brighter Beacon45.
After twenty-five years of waiting, he had been able at last to kindle it. Everybody in Mariposa remembers the building of the church. First of all they had demolished46 the little stone church to make way for the newer Evidence. It seemed almost a sacrilege, as the Dean himself said, to lay hands on it. Indeed it was at first proposed to take the stone of it and build it into a Sunday School, as a lesser47 testimony48. Then, when that provided impracticable, it was suggested that the stone be reverently49 fashioned into a wall that should stand as a token. And when even that could not be managed, the stone of the little church was laid reverently into a stone pile; afterwards it was devoutly50 sold to a building contractor51, and, like so much else in life, was forgotten.
But the building of the church, no one, I think, will forget. The Dean threw himself into the work. With his coat off and his white shirt-sleeves conspicuous52 among the gang that were working at the foundations, he set his hand to the shovel53, himself guided the road-scraper, urging on the horses; cheering and encouraging the men, till they begged him to desist. He mingled54 with the stone-masons, advising, helping55, and giving counsel, till they pleaded with him to rest. He was among the carpenters, sawing, hammering, enquiring56, suggesting, till they besought57 him to lay off. And he was night and day with the architect's assistants, drawing, planning, revising, till the architect told him to cut it out.
So great was his activity, that I doubt whether the new church would ever have been finished, had not the wardens58 and the vestry men insisted that Mr. Drone must take a holiday, and sent him on the Mackinaw trip up the lakes,—the only foreign travel of the Dean's life.
So in due time the New Church was built and it towered above the maple trees of Mariposa like a beacon on a hill. It stood so high that from the open steeple of it, where the bells were, you could see all the town lying at its feet, and the farmsteads to the south of it, and the railway like a double pencil line, and Lake Wissanotti spread out like a map. You could see and appreciate things from the height of the new church,—such as the size and the growing wealth of Mariposa,—that you never could have seen from the little stone church at all.
Presently the church was opened and the Dean preached his first sermon in it, and he called it a Greater Testimony, and he said that it was an earnest, or first fruit of endeavour, and that it was a token or pledge, and he named it also a covenant59. He said, too, that it was an anchorage and a harbour and a lighthouse as well as being a city set upon a hill; and he ended by declaring it an Ark of Refuge and notified them that the Bible Class would meet in the basement of it on that and every other third Wednesday.
In the opening months of preaching about it the Dean had called the church so often an earnest and a pledge and a guerdon and a tabernacle, that I think he used to forget that it wasn't paid for. It was only when the agent of the building society and a representative of the Hosanna Pipe and Steam Organ Co. (Limited), used to call for quarterly payments that he was suddenly reminded of the fact. Always after these men came round the Dean used to preach a special sermon on sin, in the course of which he would mention that the ancient Hebrews used to put unjust traders to death,—a thing of which he spoke with Christian serenity60.
I don't think that at first anybody troubled much about the debt on the church. Dean Drone's figures showed that it was only a matter of time before it would be extinguished; only a little effort was needed, a little girding up of the loins of the congregation and they could shoulder the whole debt and trample61 it under their feet. Let them but set their hands to the plough and they could soon guide it into the deep water. Then they might furl their sails and sit every man under his own olive tree.
Meantime, while the congregation was waiting to gird up its loins, the interest on the debt was paid somehow, or, when it wasn't paid, was added to the principal.
I don't know whether you have had any experience with Greater Testimonies62 and with Beacons63 set on Hills. If you have, you will realize how, at first gradually, and then rapidly, their position from year to year grows more distressing64. What with the building loan and the organ instalment, and the fire insurance,—a cruel charge,—and the heat and light, the rector began to realize as he added up the figures that nothing but logarithms could solve them. Then the time came when not only the rector, but all the wardens knew and the sidesmen knew that the debt was more than the church could carry; then the choir65 knew and the congregation knew and at last everybody knew; and there were special collections at Easter and special days of giving, and special weeks of tribulation66, and special arrangements with the Hosanna Pipe and Steam Organ Co. And it was noticed that when the Rural Dean announced a service of Lenten Sorrow,—aimed more especially at the business men,—the congregation had diminished by forty per cent.
I suppose things are just the same elsewhere,—I mean the peculiar67 kind of discontent that crept into the Church of England congregation in Mariposa after the setting up of the Beacon. There were those who claimed that they had seen the error from the first, though they had kept quiet, as such people always do, from breadth of mind. There were those who had felt years before how it would end, but their lips were sealed from humility68 of spirit. What was worse was that there were others who grew dissatisfied with the whole conduct of the church.
Yodel, the auctioneer, for example, narrated70 how he had been to the city and had gone into a service of the Roman Catholic church: I believe, to state it more fairly, he had "dropped in,"—the only recognized means of access to such a service. He claimed that the music that he had heard there was music, and that (outside of his profession) the chanting and intoning could not be touched.
Ed Moore, the photographer, also related that he had listened to a sermon in the city, and that if anyone would guarantee him a sermon like that he would defy you to keep him away from church. Meanwhile, failing the guarantee, he stayed away.
The very doctrines72 were impeached73. Some of the congregation began to cast doubts on eternal punishment,—doubts so grave as to keep them absent from the Lenten Services of Sorrow. Indeed, Lawyer Macartney took up the whole question of the Athanasian Creed74 one afternoon with Joe Milligan, the dentist, and hardly left a clause of it intact.
All this time, you will understand, Dean Drone kept on with his special services, and leaflets, calls, and appeals went out from the Ark of Gideon like rockets from a sinking ship. More and more with every month the debt of the church lay heavy on his mind. At times he forgot it. At other times he woke up in the night and thought about it. Sometimes as he went down the street from the lighted precincts of the Greater Testimony and passed the Salvation76 Army, praying around a naphtha lamp under the open sky, it smote77 him to the heart with a stab.
But the congregation were wrong, I think, in imputing78 fault to the sermons of Dean Drone. There I do think they were wrong. I can speak from personal knowledge when I say that the rector's sermons were not only stimulating79 in matters of faith, but contained valuable material in regard to the Greek language, to modern machinery and to a variety of things that should have proved of the highest advantage to the congregation.
There was, I say, the Greek language. The Dean always showed the greatest delicacy80 of feeling in regard to any translation in or out of it that he made from the pulpit. He was never willing to accept even the faintest shade of rendering81 different from that commonly given without being assured of the full concurrence82 of the congregation. Either the translation must be unanimous and without contradiction, or he could not pass it. He would pause in his sermon and would say: "The original Greek is 'Hoson,' but perhaps you will allow me to translate it as equivalent to 'Hoyon.'" And they did. So that if there was any fault to be found it was purely83 on the side of the congregation for not entering a protest at the time.
It was the same way in regard to machinery. After all, what better illustrates84 the supreme85 purpose of the All Wise than such a thing as the dynamo or the reciprocating86 marine87 engine or the pictures in the Scientific American?
Then, too, if a man has had the opportunity to travel and has seen the great lakes spread out by the hand of Providence88 from where one leaves the new dock at the Sound to where one arrives safe and thankful with one's dear fellow-passengers in the spirit at the concrete landing stage at Mackinaw—is not this fit and proper material for the construction of an analogy or illustration? Indeed, even apart from an analogy, is it not mighty89 interesting to narrate69, anyway? In any case, why should the church-wardens have sent the rector on the Mackinaw trip, if they had not expected him to make some little return for it?
I lay some stress on this point because the criticisms directed against the Mackinaw sermons always seemed so unfair. If the rector had described his experiences in the crude language of the ordinary newspaper, there might, I admit, have been something unfitting about it. But he was always careful to express himself in a way that showed,—or, listen, let me explain with an example.
"It happened to be my lot some years ago," he would say, "to find myself a voyager, just as one is a voyager on the sea of life, on the broad expanse of water which has been spread out to the north-west of us by the hand of Providence, at a height of five hundred and eighty-one feet above the level of the sea,—I refer, I may say, to Lake Huron." Now, how different that is from saying: "I'll never forget the time I went on the Mackinaw trip." The whole thing has a different sound entirely90. In the same way the Dean would go on:
"I was voyaging on one of those magnificent leviathans of the water,—I refer to the boats of the Northern Navigation Company,—and was standing91 beside the forward rail talking with a dear brother in the faith who was journeying westward92 also—I may say he was a commercial traveller,—and beside us was a dear sister in the spirit seated in a deck chair, while near us were two other dear souls in grace engaged in Christian pastime on the deck,—I allude93 more particularly to the game of deck billiards94."
I leave it to any reasonable man whether, with that complete and fair-minded explanation of the environment, it was not perfectly proper to close down the analogy, as the rector did, with the simple words: "In fact, it was an extremely fine morning."
Yet there were some people, even in Mariposa, that took exception and spent their Sunday dinner time in making out that they couldn't understand what Dean Drone was talking about, and asking one another if they knew. Once, as he passed out from the doors of the Greater Testimony, the rector heard some one say: "The Church would be all right if that old mugwump was out of the pulpit." It went to his heart like a barbed thorn, and stayed there.
You know, perhaps, how a remark of that sort can stay and rankle95, and make you wish you could hear it again to make sure of it, because perhaps you didn't hear it aright, and it was a mistake after all. Perhaps no one said it, anyway. You ought to have written it down at the time. I have seen the Dean take down the encyclopaedia96 in the rectory, and move his finger slowly down the pages of the letter M, looking for mugwump. But it wasn't there. I have known him, in his little study upstairs, turn over the pages of the "Animals of Palestine," looking for a mugwump. But there was none there. It must have been unknown in the greater days of Judea.
So things went on from month to month, and from year to year, and the debt and the charges loomed97 like a dark and gathering98 cloud on the horizon. I don't mean to say that efforts were not made to face the difficulty and to fight it. They were. Time after time the workers of the congregation got together and thought out plans for the extinction99 of the debt. But somehow, after every trial, the debt grew larger with each year, and every system that could be devised turned out more hopeless than the last.
They began, I think, with the "endless chain" of letters of appeal. You may remember the device, for it was all-popular in clerical circles some ten or fifteen years ago. You got a number of people to write each of them three letters asking for ten cents from three each of their friends and asking each of them to send on three similar letters. Three each from three each, and three each more from each! Do you observe the wonderful ingenuity100 of it? Nobody, I think, has forgotten how the Willing Workers of the Church of England Church of Mariposa sat down in the vestry room in the basement with a pile of stationery101 three feet high, sending out the letters. Some, I know, will never forget it. Certainly not Mr. Pupkin, the teller102 in the Exchange Bank, for it was here that he met Zena Pepperleigh, the judge's daughter, for the first time; and they worked so busily that they wrote out ever so many letters—eight or nine—in a single afternoon, and they discovered that their handwritings were awfully103 alike, which was one of the most extraordinary and amazing coincidences, you will admit, in the history of chirography.
But the scheme failed—failed utterly104. I don't know why. The letters went out and were copied broadcast and recopied, till you could see the Mariposa endless chain winding105 its way towards the Rocky Mountains. But they never got the ten cents. The Willing Workers wrote for it in thousands, but by some odd chance they never struck the person who had it.
Then after that there came a regular winter of effort. First of all they had a bazaar106 that was got up by the Girls' Auxiliary and held in the basement of the church. All the girls wore special costumes that were brought up from the city, and they had booths, where there was every imaginable thing for sale—pincushion covers, and chair covers, and sofa covers, everything that you can think of. If the people had once started buying them, the debt would have been lifted in no time. Even as it was the bazaar only lost twenty dollars.
After that, I think, was the magic lantern lecture that Dean Drone gave on "Italy and her Invaders107." They got the lantern and the slides up from the city, and it was simply splendid. Some of the slides were perhaps a little confusing, but it was all there,—the pictures of the dense108 Italian jungle and the crocodiles and the naked invaders with their invading clubs. It was a pity that it was such a bad night, snowing hard, and a curling match on, or they would have made a lot of money out of the lecture. As it was the loss, apart from the breaking of the lantern, which was unavoidable, was quite trifling109.
I can hardly remember all the things that there were after that. I recollect110 that it was always Mullins who arranged about renting the hall and printing the tickets and all that sort of thing. His father, you remember, had been at the Anglican college with Dean Drone, and though the rector was thirty-seven years older than Mullins, he leaned upon him, in matters of business, as upon a staff; and though Mullins was thirty-seven years younger than the Dean, he leaned against him, in matters of doctrine71, as against a rock.
At one time they got the idea that what the public wanted was not anything instructive but something light and amusing. Mullins said that people loved to laugh. He said that if you get a lot of people all together and get them laughing you can do anything you like with them. Once they start to laugh they are lost. So they got Mr. Dreery, the English Literature teacher at the high school, to give an evening of readings from the Great Humorists from Chaucer to Adam Smith. They came mighty near to making a barrel of money out of that. If the people had once started laughing it would have been all over with them. As it was I heard a lot of them say that they simply wanted to scream with laughter: they said they just felt like bursting into peals75 of laughter all the time. Even when, in the more subtle parts, they didn't feel like bursting out laughing, they said they had all they could do to keep from smiling. They said they never had such a hard struggle in their lives not to smile.
In fact the chairman said when he put the vote of thanks that he was sure if people had known what the lecture was to be like there would have been a much better "turn-out." But you see all that the people had to go on was just the announcement of the name of the lecturer, Mr. Dreery, and that he would lecture on English Humour All Seats Twenty-five Cents. As the chairman expressed it himself, if the people had had any idea, any idea at all, of what the lecture would be like they would have been there in hundreds. But how could they get an idea that it would be so amusing with practically nothing to go upon?
After that attempt things seemed to go from bad to worse. Nearly everybody was disheartened about it. What would have happened to the debt, or whether they would have ever paid it off, is more than I can say, if it hadn't occurred that light broke in on Mullins in the strangest and most surprising way you can imagine. It happened that he went away for his bank holidays, and while he was away he happened to be present in one of the big cities and saw how they went at it there to raise money. He came home in such a state of excitement that he went straight up from the Mariposa station to the rectory, valise and all, and he burst in one April evening to where the Rural Dean was sitting with the three girls beside the lamp in the front room, and he cried out:
"Mr. Drone, I've got it,—I've got a way that will clear the debt before you're a fortnight older. We'll have a Whirlwind Campaign in Mariposa!"
But stay! The change from the depth of depression to the pinnacle111 of hope is too abrupt112. I must pause and tell you in another chapter of the Whirlwind Campaign in Mariposa.
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cemetery
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underneath
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rustic
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incumbent
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muse
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slumber
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immediate
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perfectly
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skull
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flakes
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rev
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deplore
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auxiliary
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| n.行会，同业公会，协会 | |
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recuperate
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| v.恢复 | |
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19
clergy
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| n.[总称]牧师，神职人员 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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21
aptitude
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| n.(学习方面的)才能，资质，天资 | |
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22
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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23
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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24
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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25
spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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26
afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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27
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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28
cedar
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| n.雪松，香柏(木) | |
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29
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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30
backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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31
forte
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| n.长处，擅长；adj.(音乐)强音的 | |
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32
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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33
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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34
lamented
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| adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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35
glorification
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| n.赞颂 | |
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36
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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37
deduct
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| vt.扣除，减去 | |
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38
stipend
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| n.薪贴；奖学金；养老金 | |
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39
upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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40
downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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41
warden
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| n.监察员，监狱长，看守人，监护人 | |
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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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43
banking
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| n.银行业，银行学，金融业 | |
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44
kindle
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| v.点燃，着火 | |
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45
beacon
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| n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔 | |
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demolished
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| v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光 | |
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47
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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48
testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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49
reverently
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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50
devoutly
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| adv.虔诚地，虔敬地，衷心地 | |
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51
contractor
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| n.订约人，承包人，收缩肌 | |
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52
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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53
shovel
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| n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出 | |
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54
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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55
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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56
enquiring
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| a.爱打听的，显得好奇的 | |
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57
besought
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| v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的过去式和过去分词 )；(beseech的过去式与过去分词) | |
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58
wardens
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| n.看守人( warden的名词复数 )；管理员；监察员；监察官 | |
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59
covenant
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| n.盟约，契约；v.订盟约 | |
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60
serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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61
trample
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| vt.踩，践踏；无视，伤害，侵犯 | |
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testimonies
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| （法庭上证人的）证词( testimony的名词复数 )； 证明，证据 | |
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63
beacons
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| 灯塔( beacon的名词复数 )； 烽火； 指路明灯； 无线电台或发射台 | |
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distressing
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| a.使人痛苦的 | |
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65
choir
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| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
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66
tribulation
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| n.苦难，灾难 | |
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67
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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68
humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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69
narrate
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| v.讲，叙述 | |
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narrated
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| v.故事( narrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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71
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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72
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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73
impeached
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| v.控告（某人）犯罪( impeach的过去式和过去分词 )；弹劾；对（某事物）怀疑；提出异议 | |
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74
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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75
peals
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| n.（声音大而持续或重复的）洪亮的响声( peal的名词复数 )；隆隆声；洪亮的钟声；钟乐v.（使）（钟等）鸣响，（雷等）发出隆隆声( peal的第三人称单数 ) | |
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76
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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78
imputing
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| v.把（错误等）归咎于( impute的现在分词 ) | |
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stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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80
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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81
rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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82
concurrence
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| n.同意；并发 | |
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83
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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84
illustrates
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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85
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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86
reciprocating
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| adj.往复的；来回的；交替的；摆动的v.报答，酬答( reciprocate的现在分词 )；（机器的部件）直线往复运动 | |
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87
marine
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| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
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88
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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89
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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90
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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91
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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92
westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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93
allude
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| v.提及，暗指 | |
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94
billiards
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| n.台球 | |
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95
rankle
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| v.（怨恨，失望等）难以释怀 | |
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96
encyclopaedia
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| n.百科全书 | |
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97
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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98
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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99
extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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100
ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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101
stationery
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| n.文具；(配套的)信笺信封 | |
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102
teller
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| n.银行出纳员；(选举)计票员 | |
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103
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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104
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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105
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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106
bazaar
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| n.集市，商店集中区 | |
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107
invaders
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| 入侵者，侵略者，侵入物( invader的名词复数 ) | |
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108
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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109
trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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110
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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111
pinnacle
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| n.尖塔，尖顶，山峰；(喻)顶峰 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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