"That's Crete," he said, when at last he became aware of me close at hand.
"Crete!" said I.
"Yes," he said, "Crete."
He came nearer to me. "That, sir," he said with a challenging emphasis, "is the most wonderful island I've ever yet set eyes on,—quite the most wonderful."
"Five thousand years ago," he remarked after a pause that seemed to me to be calculated, "they were building palaces there, better than the best we can build to-day. And things—like modern things. They had bathrooms there, beautifully fitted bathrooms—and admirable sanitation—admirable. Practically—American. They had better artists to serve them than your King Edward has, why! Minos would have laughed or screamed at all that Windsor furniture. And the things they made of gold, sir—you couldn't get them done anywhere to-day. Not for any money. There was a Go about them.... They had a kind of writing, too—before the Phœnicians. No man can read it now, and there it is. Fifty centuries ago it was; and to-day—They grow oranges and lemons. And they riot.... Everything else gone.... It's as if men struggled up to a certain pitch and then—grew tired.... All this Mediterranean2; it's a tired sea...."
That was the beginning of a curious conversation. He was an American, a year or so younger than myself, going, he said, "to look at Egypt."
"In our country," he explained, "we're apt to forget all these worked-out regions. Too apt. We don't get our perspectives. We think the whole blessed world is one everlasting3 boom. It hit me first down in Yucatan that that wasn't so. Why! the world's littered with the remains4 of booms and swaggering beginnings. Americanism!—there's always been Americanism. This Mediterranean is just a Museum of old Americas. I guess Tyre and Sidon thought they were licking creation all the time. It's set me thinking. What's really going on? Why—anywhere,—you're running about among ruins—anywhere. And ruins of something just as good as anything we're doing to-day. Better—in some ways. It takes the heart out of you...."
It was Gidding, who is now my close friend and ally. I remember very vividly5 the flavor of morning freshness as we watched Crete pass away northward6 and I listened to his talk.
"I was coming out of New York Harbor a month ago and looking back at the skyscrapers," he said, "and suddenly it hit me in the mind;—'That's just the next ruin,' I thought."
I remember that much of our first talk, but the rest of it now is indistinct.
We had however struck up an acquaintance, we were both alone, and until he left me on his way to Abydos we seem now to have been conversing7 all the time. And almost all the time we were discussing human destiny and the causes of effort and decay, and whether the last few ascendant centuries the world has seen have in them anything more persistent8 than the countless9 beginnings that have gone before.
"There's Science," said I a little doubtfully.
"At Cnossus there they had Dædalus, sir, fifty centuries ago. Dædalus! He was an F.R.S. all right. I haven't a doubt he flew. If they hadn't steel they had brass10. We're too conceited11 about our little modern things."
点击收听单词发音
1 solitary | |
adj.孤独的,独立的,荒凉的;n.隐士 | |
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2 Mediterranean | |
adj.地中海的;地中海沿岸的 | |
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3 everlasting | |
adj.永恒的,持久的,无止境的 | |
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4 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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5 vividly | |
adv.清楚地,鲜明地,生动地 | |
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6 northward | |
adv.向北;n.北方的地区 | |
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7 conversing | |
v.交谈,谈话( converse的现在分词 ) | |
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8 persistent | |
adj.坚持不懈的,执意的;持续的 | |
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9 countless | |
adj.无数的,多得不计其数的 | |
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10 brass | |
n.黄铜;黄铜器,铜管乐器 | |
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11 conceited | |
adj.自负的,骄傲自满的 | |
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