Over our coffee in the Turkish room Minver was usually a censor1 of our several foibles rather than a sharer in our philosophic2 speculations3 and metaphysical conjectures4. He liked to disable me as one professionally vowed6 to the fabulous7, and he had unfailing fun with the romantic sentimentality of Rulledge, which was in fact so little in keeping with the gross super-abundance of his person, his habitual8 gluttony, and his ridiculous indolence. Minver knew very well that Rulledge was a good fellow withal, and would willingly do any kind action that did not seriously interfere9 with his comfort, or make too heavy a draft upon his pocket. His self-indulgence, which was quite blameless, unless surfeit10 is a fault, was the basis of an interest in occult themes, which was the means of even higher diversion to Minver. He liked to have Rulledge approach Wanhope from this side, in the invincible11 [Pg 46]persuasion that the psychologist would be interested in these themes by the law of his science, though he had been assured again and again that in spite of its misleading name psychology12 did not deal with the soul as Rulledge supposed the soul; and Minver's eyes lighted up with a prescience of uncommon13 pleasure when, late one night, after we had vainly tried to hit it off in talk, now of this, now of that, Rulledge asked Wanhope, abruptly14 as if it followed from something before:
"Wasn't there a great deal more said about presentiments15 forty or fifty years ago than there is now?"
Wanhope had been lapsing17 deeper and deeper into the hollow of his chair; but he now pulled himself up, and turned quickly toward Rulledge. "What made you think of that?" he asked.
"I don't know. Why?"
"Because I was thinking of it myself." He glanced at me, and I shook my head.
"Well," Minver said, "if it will leave Acton out in the cold, I'll own that I was thinking of it, too. I was going back in my mind, for no reason that I know of, to my childhood, when I first heard of such a thing as a presentiment16, and when I was afraid of having one. I had the notion that presentiments ran in the family."
[Pg 47]"Why had you that notion?" Rulledge demanded.
"I don't know that I proposed telling," the painter said, giving himself to his pipe.
"Perhaps you didn't have it," Rulledge retaliated18.
Wanhope turned from the personal aspect of the matter. "It's rather curious that we should all three have had the same thing in mind just now; or, rather, it is not very curious. Such coincidences are really very common. Something must have been said at dinner which suggested it to all of us."
"I mightn't have heard what was said," I explained. "I suppose the passing of all that sort of sub-beliefs must date from the general lapse21 of faith in personal immortality22."
"Yes, no doubt," Wanhope assented. "It is very striking how sudden the lapse was. Everyone who experienced it in himself could date it to a year, if not to a day. The agnosticism of scientific men was of course all the time undermining the fabric23 of faith, and then it fell in abruptly, reaching one believer after another as fast as the ground was taken wholly or partly from under his feet. I can remember how people [Pg 48]once disputed whether there were such beings as guardian24 spirits or not. That minor25 question was disposed of when it was decided26 that there were no spirits at all."
"Naturally," Minver said. "And the decay of the presentiment must have been hastened by the failure of so many presentiments to make good."
"The great majority of them have failed to make good, from the beginning of time," Wanhope replied.
"There are two kinds of presentiments," Rulledge suggested, with a philosophic air. "The true and the untrue."
"Like mushrooms," Minver said. "Only, the true presentiment kills, and the true mushroom nourishes. Talking of mushrooms, they have a way in Switzerland of preserving them in walnut27 oil, and they fill you with the darkest forebodings, after you've filled yourself with the mushrooms. There's some occult relation between the two. Think it out, Rulledge!"
Rulledge ignored him in turning to Wanhope. "The trouble is how to distinguish the true from the untrue presentiment."
"It would be interesting," Wanhope began, but Minver broke in upon him maliciously28.
"To know how much the dyspepsia of our predecessors29 had to with the prevalence of [Pg 49]presentimentalism? I agree with you, that a better diet has a good deal to do with the decline of the dark foreboding among us. What I can't understand is, how a gross and reckless feeder, like Rulledge here, doesn't go about like ancestral voices prophesying30 all sorts of dreadful things."
"That's rather cheap talk, even for you, Minver," Rulledge said. "Why did you think presentiments ran in your family?"
"Well, there you have me, Rulledge. That's where my theory fails. I can remember," Minver continued soberly, "the talk there used to be about them among my people. They were serious people in an unreligious way, or rather an unecclesiastical way. They were never spiritualists, but I don't think there was one of them who doubted that he should live hereafter; he might doubt that he was living here, but there was no question of the other thing. I must say it gave a dignity to their conversation which, when they met, as they were apt to do at one another's houses on Sunday nights, was not of common things. One of my uncles was a merchant, another a doctor; my father was a portrait-painter by profession, and a sign-painter by practice. I suppose that's where I got my knack31, such as it is. The merchant was an invalid32, rather, though he kept about his business, and our people merely [Pg 50]recognized him as being out of health. He was what we could call, for that day and region—the Middle West of the early fifties—a man of unusual refinement34. I suppose this was temperamental with him largely; but he had cultivated tastes, too. I remember him as a peculiarly gentle person, with a pensive35 cast of face, and the melancholy36 accomplishment37 of playing the flute38."
"Yes, it's quite obsolete," Minver said. "They only play the flute in the orchestras now. I always look at the man who plays it and think of my uncle. He used to be very nice to me as a child; and he was very fond of my father, in a sort of filial way; my father was so much older. I can remember my young aunt; and how pretty she was as she sat at the piano, and sang and played to his fluting40. When she looked forward at the music, her curls fell into her neck; they wore curls then, grown-up women; and though I don't think curls are beautiful, my aunt's beauty would have been less without them; in fact, I can't think of her without them.
"She was delicate, too; they were really a pair of invalids41; but she had none of his melancholy. They had had several children, who died, one after another, and there was only one left at the [Pg 51]time I am speaking of. I rather wonder, now, that the thought of those poor little ghost-cousins didn't make me uncomfortable. I was a very superstitious42 boy, but I seem not to have thought of them. I played with the little girl who was left, and I liked going to my uncle's better than anywhere else. I preferred going in the daytime and in the summer-time. Then my cousin and I sat in a nook of the garden and fought violets, as we called it; hooked the wry43 necks of the flowers together and twitched44 to see which blossom would come off first. She was a sunny little thing, like her mother, and she had curls, like her. I can't express the feeling I had for my aunt; she seemed the embodiment of a world that was at once very proud and very good. I suppose she dressed fashionably, as things went then and there; and her style as well as her beauty fascinated me. I would have done anything to please her, far more than to please my cousin. With her I used to squabble, and sometimes sent her crying to her mother. Then I always ran off home, but when I sneaked45 back, or was sent for to come and play with my cousin, I was not scolded for my wickedness.
"My uncle was more prosperous than his brothers; he lived in a much better house than ours, and I used to be quite awe46-struck by its [Pg 52]magnificence. He went East, as we said, twice a year to buy goods, and he had things sent back for his house such as we never saw elsewhere; those cask-shaped seats of blue china for the verandas47, and bamboo chairs. There were cane-bottom chairs in the sitting-room48, such as we had in our best room; in the parlor49 the large pieces were of mahogany veneer50, upholstered in black hair-cloth; they held me in awe. The piano filled half the place; the windows came down to the ground, and had Venetian blinds and lace curtains.
"We all went in there after the Sunday night supper, and then the fathers and mothers were apt to begin talking of those occult things that gave me the creeps. It was after the Rochester Knockings, as they were called, had been exposed, and so had spread like an infection everywhere. It was as if people were waiting to have the fraud shown up in order to believe in it."
"That sort of thing happens," Wanhope agreed. "It's as if the seeds of the ventilated imposture51 were carried atmospherically52 into the human mind broadcast and a universal crop of self-delusion53 sprang up."
"At any rate," Minver resumed, "instead of the gift being confined to a few persons—a small sisterhood with detonating knee-joints—there were [Pg 53]rappings in every well-regulated household; all the tables tipped; people went to sleep to the soft patter of raps on the headboards of their beds; and girls who could not spell were occupied in delivering messages from Socrates, Ben Franklin and Shakespeare. Besides the physical demonstrations54, there were all sorts of psychical55 intimations from the world which we've now abolished."
"Not permanently56, perhaps," I suggested.
"Well, that remains57 to be seen," Minver said. "It was this sort of thing which my people valued above the other. Perhaps they were exclusive in their tastes, and did not care for an occultism which the crowd could share with them; though this is a conjecture5 too long after the fact to have much value. As far as I can now remember, they used to talk of the double presence of living persons, like their being where they greatly wished to be as well as where they really were; of clairvoyance58; of what we call mind-transference, now; of weird59 coincidences of all kinds; of strange experiences of their own and of others; of the participation60 of animals in these experiences, like the testimony61 of cats and dogs to the presence of invisible spirits; of dreams that came true, or came near coming true; and, above everything, of forebodings and presentiments.
[Pg 54]"I dare say they didn't always talk of such things, and I'm giving possibly a general impression from a single instance; everything remembered of childhood is as if from large and repeated occurrence. But it must have happened more than once, for I recall that when it came to presentiments my aunt broke it up, perhaps once only. My cousin used to get very sleepy on the rug before the fire, and her mother would carry her off to bed, very cross and impatient of being kissed good night, while I was left to the brunt of the occult alone. I could not go with my aunt and cousin, and I folded myself in my mother's skirt, where I sat at her feet, and listened in an anguish62 of drowsy63 terror. The talk would pass into my dreams, and the dreams would return into the talk; and I would suffer a sort of double nightmare, waking and sleeping."
"Poor little devil!" Rulledge broke out. "It's astonishing how people will go on before children, and never think of the misery64 they're making for them."
"I believe my mother thought of it," Minver returned, "but when that sort of talk began, the witchery of it was probably too strong for her. 'It held her like a two years' child'; I was eight that winter. I don't know how long my suffering had gone on, when my aunt came back and [Pg 55]seemed to break up the talk. It had got to presentiments, and, whether they knew that this was forbidden ground with her, or whether she now actually said something about it, they turned to talk of other things. I'm not telling you all this from my own memory, which deals with only a point or two. My father and mother used to recur65 to it when I was older, and I am piecing out my story from their memories.
"My uncle, with all his temperamental pensiveness66, was my aunt's stay and cheer in the fits of depression which she paid with for her usual gaiety. But these fits always began with some uncommon depression of his—some effect of the forebodings he was subject to. Her opposition67 to that kind of thing was purely68 unselfish, but certainly she dreaded69 it for him as well as herself. I suppose there was a sort of conscious silence in the others which betrayed them to her. 'Well,' she said, laughing, 'have you been at it again? That poor child looks frightened out of his wits.'
"They all laughed then, and my father said, hypocritically, 'I was just going to ask Felix whether he expected to start East this week or next.'
"My uncle tried to make light of what was always a heavy matter with him. 'Well, yesterday,' he answered, 'I should have said next week; [Pg 56]but it's this week, now. I'm going on Wednesday.'
"'By stage or packet?' my father asked.
"They went on to speak of the trip to New York, and how much easier it was then than it used to be when you had to go by stage over the mountains to Philadelphia and on by stage again. Now, it seemed, you got the Erie Canal packet at Buffalo and the Hudson River steamboat at Albany, and reached New York in four or five days, in great comfort without the least fatigue71. They had all risen and my aunt had gone out with her sisters-in-law to help them get their wraps. When they returned, it seemed that they had been talking of the journey, too, for she said to my mother, laughing again, 'Well, Richard may think it's easy; but somehow Felix never expects to get home alive.'
"I don't think I ever heard my uncle laugh, but I can remember how he smiled at my aunt's laughing, as he put his hand on her shoulder; I thought it was somehow a very sad smile. On Wednesday I was allowed to go with my aunt and cousin to see him off on the packet, which came up from Cincinnati early in the morning; I had lain awake most of the night, and then nearly [Pg 57]overslept myself, and then was at the canal in time. We made a gay parting for him, but when the boat started, and I was gloating on the three horses making up the tow-path at a spanking72 trot73, under the snaky spirals of the driver's smacking74 whip-lash, I caught sight of my uncle standing75 on the deck and smiling that sad smile of his. My aunt was waving her handkerchief, but when she turned away she put it to her eyes.
"The rest of the story, such as it is, I know, almost to the very end, from what I heard my father and mother say from my uncle's report afterward76. He told them that, when the boat started, the stress to stay was so strong upon him that if he had not been ashamed he would have jumped ashore77 and followed us home. He said that he could not analyze78 his feelings; it was not yet any definite foreboding, but simply a depression that seemed to crush him so that all his movements were leaden, when he turned at last, and went down to breakfast in the cabin below. The stress did not lighten with the little changes and chances of the voyage to the lake. He was never much given to making acquaintance with people, but now he found himself so absent-minded that he was aware of being sometimes spoken to by friendly strangers without replying until it was too late even to apologize. He was not only [Pg 58]steeped in this gloom, but he had the constant distress79 of the effort he involuntarily made to trace it back to some cause or follow it forward to some consequence. He kept trying at this, with a mind so tensely bent80 to the mere33 horror that he could not for a moment strain away from it. He would very willingly have occupied himself with other things, but the anguish which the double action of his mind gave him was such that he could not bear the effort; all he could do was to abandon himself to his obsession81. This would ease him only for a while, though, and then he would suffer the misery of trying in vain to escape from it.
"He thought he must be going mad, but insanity82 implied some definite delusion or hallucination, and, so far as he could make out, he had none. He was simply crushed by a nameless foreboding. Something dreadful was to happen, but this was all he felt; knowledge had no part in his condition. He could not say whether he slept during the two nights that passed before he reached Toledo, where he was to take the lake steamer for Buffalo. He wished to turn back again, but the relentless83 pressure which had kept him from turning back at the start was as strong as ever with him. He tried to give his presentiment direction by talking with the other passengers about a recent accident to a lake steamer, in which several hundred lives [Pg 59]were lost; there had been a collision in rough weather, and one of the boats had gone down in a few minutes. There was a sort of relief in that, but the double action of the mind brought the same intolerable anguish again, and he settled back for refuge under the shadow of his impenetrable doom84. This did not lift till he was well on his way from Albany to New York by the Hudson River. The canal-boat voyage from Buffalo to Albany had been as eventless as that to Toledo, and his lake steamer had reached Buffalo in safety, for which it had seemed as if those lost in the recent disaster had paid.
"He tried to pierce his heavy cloud by argument from the security in which he had traveled so far, but the very security had its hopelessness. If something had happened—some slight accident—to interrupt it, his reason, or his unreason, might have taken it for a sign that the obscure doom, whatever it was, had been averted85.
"Up to this time he had not been able to connect his foreboding with anything definite, and he was not afraid for himself. He was simply without the formless hope that helps us on at every step, through good and bad, and it was a mortal peril86, which he came through safely while scores of others were lost, that gave his presentiment direction. He had taken the day boat from [Pg 60]Albany, and about the middle of the afternoon the boat, making way under a head-wind, took fire. The pilot immediately ran her ashore, and her passengers, those that had the courage for it, ran aft, and began jumping from the stern, but a great many women and children were burned. My uncle was one of the first of those who jumped, and he stood in the water, trying to save those who came after from drowning; it was not very deep. Some of the women lost courage for the leap, and some turned back into the flames, remembering children they had left behind. One poor creature stood hesitating wildly, and he called up to her to jump. At last she did so, almost into his arms, and then she clung about him as he helped her ashore. 'Oh,' she cried out between her sobs87, 'if you have a wife and children at home, God will take you safe back to them; you have saved my life for my husband and little ones.' 'No,' he was conscious of saying, 'I shall never see my wife again,' and now his foreboding had the direction that it had wanted before.
"From that on he simply knew that he should not get home alive, and he waited resignedly for the time and form of his disaster. He had a sort of peace in that. He went about his business intelligently, and from habit carefully, but it was with a mechanical action of the mind, something, [Pg 61]he imagined, like the mechanical action of his body in those organs which do their part without bidding from the will. He was only a few days in New York, but in the course of them he got several letters from his wife telling him that all was going well with her and their daughter. It was before the times when you can ask and answer questions by telegraph, and he started back, necessarily without having heard the latest news from home.
"He made the return trip in a sort of daze88, talking, reading, eating, and sleeping in the calm certainty of doom, and only wondering how it would be fulfilled, and what hour of the night or day. But it is no use my eking89 this out; I heard it, as I say, when I was a child, and I am afraid that if I should try to give it with the full detail I should take to inventing particulars." Minver paused a moment, and then he said: "But there was one thing that impressed itself indelibly on my memory. My uncle got back perfectly90 safe and well."
"Oh!" Rulledge snorted in rude dissatisfaction.
"What was it impressed itself on your memory?" Wanhope asked, with scientific detachment from the story as a story.
Minver continued to address Wanhope, without regarding Rulledge. "My uncle told my father [Pg 62]that some sort of psychical change, which he could not describe, but which he was as conscious of as if it were physical, took place within him as he came in sight of his house—"
"Yes," Wanhope prompted.
"He had driven down from the canal-packet in the old omnibus which used to meet passengers and distribute them at their destinations in town. All the way to his house he was still under the doom as regarded himself, but bewildered that he should be getting home safe and well, and he was refusing his escape, as it were, and then suddenly, at the sight of the familiar house, the change within him happened. He looked out of the omnibus window and saw a group of neighbors at his gate. As he got out of the omnibus, my father took him by the hand, as if to hold him back a moment. Then he said to my father, very quietly, 'You needn't tell me: my wife is dead.'"
There was an appreciable91 pause, in which we were all silent, and then Rulledge demanded, greedily, "And was she?"
"Really, Rulledge!" I could not help protesting.
Minver asked him, almost compassionately92 and with unwonted gentleness, as from the mood in which his reminiscence had left him: "You suspected a hoax93? She had died suddenly the night before while she and my cousin were getting [Pg 63]things ready to welcome my uncle home in the morning. I'm sorry you're disappointed," he added, getting back to his irony94.
"Whatever," Rulledge pursued, "became of the little girl?"
"She died rather young; a great many years ago; and my uncle soon after her."
Rulledge went away without saying anything, but presently returned with the sandwich which he had apparently95 gone for, while Wanhope was remarking: "That want of definition in the presentiment at first, and then its determination in the new direction by, as it were, propinquity—it is all very curious. Possibly we shall some day discover a law in such matters."
Rulledge said: "How was it your boyhood was passed in the Middle West, Minver? I always thought you were a Bostonian."
"I was an adoptive Bostonian for a good while, until I decided to become a native New-Yorker, so that I could always be near to you, Rulledge. You can never know what a delicate satisfaction you are."
Minver laughed, and we were severally restored to the wonted relations which his story had interrupted.
点击收听单词发音
1 censor | |
n./vt.审查,审查员;删改 | |
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2 philosophic | |
adj.哲学的,贤明的 | |
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3 speculations | |
n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 );思考;投机活动;推断 | |
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4 conjectures | |
推测,猜想( conjecture的名词复数 ) | |
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5 conjecture | |
n./v.推测,猜测 | |
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6 vowed | |
起誓,发誓(vow的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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7 fabulous | |
adj.极好的;极为巨大的;寓言中的,传说中的 | |
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8 habitual | |
adj.习惯性的;通常的,惯常的 | |
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9 interfere | |
v.(in)干涉,干预;(with)妨碍,打扰 | |
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10 surfeit | |
v.使饮食过度;n.(食物)过量,过度 | |
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11 invincible | |
adj.不可征服的,难以制服的 | |
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12 psychology | |
n.心理,心理学,心理状态 | |
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13 uncommon | |
adj.罕见的,非凡的,不平常的 | |
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14 abruptly | |
adv.突然地,出其不意地 | |
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15 presentiments | |
n.(对不祥事物的)预感( presentiment的名词复数 ) | |
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16 presentiment | |
n.预感,预觉 | |
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17 lapsing | |
v.退步( lapse的现在分词 );陷入;倒退;丧失 | |
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18 retaliated | |
v.报复,反击( retaliate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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19 assented | |
同意,赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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20 demurred | |
v.表示异议,反对( demur的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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21 lapse | |
n.过失,流逝,失效,抛弃信仰,间隔;vi.堕落,停止,失效,流逝;vt.使失效 | |
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22 immortality | |
n.不死,不朽 | |
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23 fabric | |
n.织物,织品,布;构造,结构,组织 | |
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24 guardian | |
n.监护人;守卫者,保护者 | |
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25 minor | |
adj.较小(少)的,较次要的;n.辅修学科;vi.辅修 | |
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26 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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27 walnut | |
n.胡桃,胡桃木,胡桃色,茶色 | |
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28 maliciously | |
adv.有敌意地 | |
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29 predecessors | |
n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 );前辈;(被取代的)原有事物;前身 | |
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30 prophesying | |
v.预告,预言( prophesy的现在分词 ) | |
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31 knack | |
n.诀窍,做事情的灵巧的,便利的方法 | |
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32 invalid | |
n.病人,伤残人;adj.有病的,伤残的;无效的 | |
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33 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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34 refinement | |
n.文雅;高尚;精美;精制;精炼 | |
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35 pensive | |
a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的 | |
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36 melancholy | |
n.忧郁,愁思;adj.令人感伤(沮丧)的,忧郁的 | |
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37 accomplishment | |
n.完成,成就,(pl.)造诣,技能 | |
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38 flute | |
n.长笛;v.吹笛 | |
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39 mused | |
v.沉思,冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 );沉思自语说(某事) | |
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40 fluting | |
有沟槽的衣料; 吹笛子; 笛声; 刻凹槽 | |
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41 invalids | |
病人,残疾者( invalid的名词复数 ) | |
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42 superstitious | |
adj.迷信的 | |
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43 wry | |
adj.讽刺的;扭曲的 | |
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44 twitched | |
vt.& vi.(使)抽动,(使)颤动(twitch的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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45 sneaked | |
v.潜行( sneak的过去式和过去分词 );偷偷溜走;(儿童向成人)打小报告;告状 | |
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46 awe | |
n.敬畏,惊惧;vt.使敬畏,使惊惧 | |
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47 verandas | |
阳台,走廊( veranda的名词复数 ) | |
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48 sitting-room | |
n.(BrE)客厅,起居室 | |
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49 parlor | |
n.店铺,营业室;会客室,客厅 | |
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50 veneer | |
n.(墙上的)饰面,虚饰 | |
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51 imposture | |
n.冒名顶替,欺骗 | |
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52 atmospherically | |
adv.由大气压所致地,气压所致地,气压上 | |
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53 delusion | |
n.谬见,欺骗,幻觉,迷惑 | |
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54 demonstrations | |
证明( demonstration的名词复数 ); 表明; 表达; 游行示威 | |
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55 psychical | |
adj.有关特异功能现象的;有关特异功能官能的;灵魂的;心灵的 | |
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56 permanently | |
adv.永恒地,永久地,固定不变地 | |
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57 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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58 clairvoyance | |
n.超人的洞察力 | |
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59 weird | |
adj.古怪的,离奇的;怪诞的,神秘而可怕的 | |
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60 participation | |
n.参与,参加,分享 | |
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61 testimony | |
n.证词;见证,证明 | |
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62 anguish | |
n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦,烦恼 | |
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63 drowsy | |
adj.昏昏欲睡的,令人发困的 | |
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64 misery | |
n.痛苦,苦恼,苦难;悲惨的境遇,贫苦 | |
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65 recur | |
vi.复发,重现,再发生 | |
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66 pensiveness | |
n.pensive(沉思的)的变形 | |
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67 opposition | |
n.反对,敌对 | |
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68 purely | |
adv.纯粹地,完全地 | |
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69 dreaded | |
adj.令人畏惧的;害怕的v.害怕,恐惧,担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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70 buffalo | |
n.(北美)野牛;(亚洲)水牛 | |
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71 fatigue | |
n.疲劳,劳累 | |
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72 spanking | |
adj.强烈的,疾行的;n.打屁股 | |
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73 trot | |
n.疾走,慢跑;n.老太婆;现成译本;(复数)trots:腹泻(与the 连用);v.小跑,快步走,赶紧 | |
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74 smacking | |
活泼的,发出响声的,精力充沛的 | |
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75 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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76 afterward | |
adv.后来;以后 | |
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77 ashore | |
adv.在(向)岸上,上岸 | |
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78 analyze | |
vt.分析,解析 (=analyse) | |
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79 distress | |
n.苦恼,痛苦,不舒适;不幸;vt.使悲痛 | |
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80 bent | |
n.爱好,癖好;adj.弯的;决心的,一心的 | |
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81 obsession | |
n.困扰,无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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82 insanity | |
n.疯狂,精神错乱;极端的愚蠢,荒唐 | |
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83 relentless | |
adj.残酷的,不留情的,无怜悯心的 | |
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84 doom | |
n.厄运,劫数;v.注定,命定 | |
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85 averted | |
防止,避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 ); 转移 | |
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86 peril | |
n.(严重的)危险;危险的事物 | |
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87 sobs | |
啜泣(声),呜咽(声)( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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88 daze | |
v.(使)茫然,(使)发昏 | |
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89 eking | |
v.(靠节省用量)使…的供应持久( eke的现在分词 );节约使用;竭力维持生计;勉强度日 | |
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90 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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91 appreciable | |
adj.明显的,可见的,可估量的,可觉察的 | |
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92 compassionately | |
adv.表示怜悯地,有同情心地 | |
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93 hoax | |
v.欺骗,哄骗,愚弄;n.愚弄人,恶作剧 | |
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94 irony | |
n.反语,冷嘲;具有讽刺意味的事,嘲弄 | |
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95 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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