姐,我要。。。
轻松的小说阅读环境
汤姆·索亚历险记 - Chapter 21
繁体
恢复默认
返回目录【键盘操作】左右光标键:上下章节;回车键:目录;双击鼠标:停止/启动自动滚动;滚动时上下光标键调节滚动速度。
  VACATION was approaching. The schoolmaster, always severe, grew severer and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to make a good showing on "Examination" day. His rod and his ferule were seldom idle now -- at least among the smaller pupils. Only the biggest boys, and young ladies of eighteen and twenty, escaped lashing. Mr. Dobbins' lashings were very vigorous ones, too; for although he carried, under his wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only reached middle age, and there was no sign of feebleness in his muscle. As the great day approached, all the tyranny that was in him came to the surface; he seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in punishing the least shortcomings. The consequence was, that the smaller boys spent their days in terror and suffering and their nights in plotting revenge. They threw away no opportunity to do the master a mischief. But he kept ahead all the time. The retribution that followed every vengeful success was so sweeping and majestic that the boys always retired from the field badly worsted. At last they conspired together and hit upon a plan that promised a dazzling victory. They swore in the sign-painter's boy, told him the scheme, and asked his help. He had his own reasons for being delighted, for the master boarded in his father's family and had given the boy ample cause to hate him. The master's wife would go on a visit to the country in a few days, and there would be nothing to interfere with the plan; the master always prepared himself for great occasions by getting pretty well fuddled, and the sign-painter's boy said that when the dominie had reached the proper condition on Examination Evening he would "manage the thing" while he napped in his chair; then he would have him awakened at the right time and hurried away to school.In the fulness of time the interesting occasion arrived. At eight in the evening the schoolhouse was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with wreaths and festoons of foliage and flowers. The master sat throned in his great chair upon a raised platform, with his blackboard behind him. He was looking tolerably mellow. Three rows of benches on each side and six rows in front of him were occupied by the dignitaries of the town and by the parents of the pupils. To his left, back of the rows of citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon which were seated the scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening; rows of small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort; rows of gawky big boys; snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their grandmothers' ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and the flowers in their hair. All the rest of the house was filled with non-participating scholars.The exercises began. A very little boy stood up and sheepishly recited, "You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the stage," etc. -- accompanying himself with the painfully exact and spasmodic gestures which a machine might have used -- supposing the machine to be a trifle out of order. But he got through safely, though cruelly scared, and got a fine round of applause when he made his manufactured bow and retired.A little shamefaced girl lisped, "Mary had a little lamb," etc., performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and sat down flushed and happy.Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into the unquenchable and indestructible "Give me liberty or give me death" speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the middle of it. A ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked under him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the house but he had the house's silence, too, which was even worse than its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom struggled awhile and then retired, utterly defeated. There was a weak attempt at applause, but it died early."The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck" followed; also "The Assyrian Came Down," and other declamatory gems. Then there were reading exercises, and a spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with honor. The prime feature of the evening was in order, now -- original "compositions" by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of the platform, cleared her throat, held up her manuscript (tied with dainty ribbon), and proceeded to read, with labored attention to "expression" and punctuation. The themes were the same that had been illuminated upon similar occasions by their mothers before them, their grandmothers, and doubtless all their ancestors in the female line clear back to the Crusades. "Friendship" was one; "Memories of Other Days"; "Religion in History"; "Dream Land"; "The Advantages of Culture"; "Forms of political Government Compared and Contrasted"; "Melancholy"; "Filial Love"; "Heart Longings," etc., etc.A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of "fine language"; another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one of them. No matter what the subject might be, a brain-racking effort was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and religious mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the banishment of the fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient to-day; it never will be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps. There is no school in all our land where the young ladies do not feel obliged to close their compositions with a sermon; and you will find that the sermon of the most frivolous and the least religious girl in the school is always the longest and the most relentlessly pious. But enough of this. Homely truth is unpalatable.Let us return to the "Examination." The first composition that was read was one entitled "Is this, then, Life?" perhaps the reader can endure an extract from it:"In the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does the youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of festivity! Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive throng, 'the observed of all observers.' Her graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes, is whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly."In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into the Elysian world, of which she has had such bright dreams. How fairy-like does everything appear to her enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming than the last. But after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity, the flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates harshly upon her ear; the ball-room has lost its charms; and with wasted health and imbittered heart, she turns away with the conviction that earthly pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!"And so forth and so on. There was a buzz of gratification from time to time during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations of "How sweet!" "How eloquent!" "So true!" etc., and after the thing had closed with a peculiarly afflicting sermon the applause was enthusiastic.Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the "interesting" paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a "poem." Two stanzas of it will do:"A MISSOURI MAIDEN'S FAREWELL TO ALABAMA"Alabama, good-bye! I love thee well! But yet for a while do I leave thee now! Sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart doth swell, And burning recollections throng my brow! For I have wandered through thy flowery woods; Have roamed and read near Tallapoosa's stream; Have listened to Tallassee's warring floods, And wooed on Coosa's side Aurora's beam."Yet shame I not to bear an o'er-full heart, Nor blush to turn behind my tearful eyes; 'Tis from no stranger land I now must part, 'Tis to no strangers left I yield these sighs. Welcome and home were mine within this State, Whose vales I leave -- whose spires fade fast from me And cold must be mine eyes, and heart, and tête, When, dear Alabama! they turn cold on thee!"There were very few there who knew what "tête" meant, but the poem was very satisfactory, nevertheless.Next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young lady, who paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression, and began to read in a measured, solemn tone:"A VISION"Dark and tempestuous was night. Around the throne on high not a single star quivered; but the deep intonations of the heavy thunder constantly vibrated upon the ear; whilst the terrific lightning revelled in angry mood through the cloudy chambers of heaven, seeming to scorn the power exerted over its terror by the illustrious Franklin! Even the boisterous winds unanimously came forth from their mystic homes, and blustered about as if to enhance by their aid the wildness of the scene."At such a time,so dark,so dreary, for human sympathy my very spirit sighed; but instead thereof,"'My dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter and guide My joy in grief, my second bliss in joy,' came to my side.She moved like one of those bright beings pictured in the sunny walks of fancy's Eden by the romantic and young, a queen of beauty unadorned save by her own transcendent loveliness. So soft was her step, it failed to make even a sound, and but for the magical thrill imparted by her genial touch, as other unobtrusive beauties, she would have glided away un-perceived -- unsought. A strange sadness rested upon her features, like icy tears upon the robe of December, as she pointed to the contending elements without, and bade me contemplate the two beings presented."This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-presbyterians that it took the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in delivering the prize to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it was by far the most "eloquent" thing he had ever listened to, and that Daniel Webster himself might well be proud of it.It may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in which the word "beauteous" was over-fondled, and human experience referred to as "life's page," was up to the usual average.Now the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his chair aside, turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a map of America on the blackboard, to exercise the geography class upon. But he made a sad business of it with his unsteady hand, and a smothered titter rippled over the house. He knew what the matter was, and set himself to right it. He sponged out lines and remade them; but he only distorted them more than ever, and the tittering was more pronounced. He threw his entire attention upon his work, now, as if determined not to be put down by the mirth. He felt that all eyes were fastened upon him; he imagined he was succeeding, and yet the tittering continued; it even manifestly increased. And well it might. There was a garret above, pierced with a scuttle over his head; and down through this scuttle came a cat, suspended around the haunches by a string; she had a rag tied about her head and jaws to keep her from mewing; as she slowly descended she curved upward and clawed at the string, she swung downward and clawed at the intangible air. The tittering rose higher and higher -- the cat was within six inches of the absorbed teacher's head -- down, down, a little lower, and she grabbed his wig with her desperate claws, clung to it, and was snatched up into the garret in an instant with her trophy still in her possession! And how the light did blaze abroad from the master's bald pate -- for the sign-painter's boy had gilded it!That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come.[NOTE:-- The pretended "compositions" quoted in this chapter are taken without alteration from a volume entitled "prose and poetry, by a Western Lady" -- but they are exactly and precisely after the schoolgirl pattern, and hence are much happier than any mere imitations could be.]
或许您还会喜欢:
了不起的盖茨比
作者:佚名
章节:45 人气:0
摘要:那就戴顶金帽子,如果能打动她的心肠;如果你能跳得高,就为她也跳一跳,跳到她高呼:“情郎,戴金帽、跳得高的情郎,我一定得把你要!”托马斯-帕克-丹维里埃①——①这是作者的第一部小说《人间天堂》中的一个人物。我年纪还轻,阅历不深的时候,我父亲教导过我一句话,我至今还念念不忘。 [点击阅读]
交际花盛衰记
作者:佚名
章节:41 人气:0
摘要:阿尔丰斯-赛拉菲诺-迪-波西亚亲王殿下①①阿尔丰斯-赛拉菲诺-迪-波西亚亲王(一八○——一八七三),一八三三年巴尔扎克曾在米兰这位亲王家作客。这部作品主要描写巴黎,是近日在您府上构思而成的。请允许我将您的名字列于卷首。这是在您的花园里成长,受怀念之情浇灌的一束文学之花。当我漫步在boschetti②中,那里的榆树林促使我回忆起香榭丽舍大街,这怀念之情牵动我的乡愁时,是您减轻了我的忧思。 [点击阅读]
人性的优点
作者:佚名
章节:4 人气:0
摘要:1、改变人一生的24个字最重要的是,不要去看远处模糊的,而要去做手边清楚的事。1871年春天,一个年轻人,作为一名蒙特瑞综合医院的医科学生,他的生活中充满了忧虑:怎样才能通过期末考试?该做些什么事情?该到什么地方去?怎样才能开业?怎样才能谋生?他拿起一本书,看到了对他的前途有着很大影响的24个字。这24个字使1871年这位年轻的医科学生成为当时最著名的医学家。 [点击阅读]
人性的记录
作者:佚名
章节:31 人气:0
摘要:公众的记忆力是短暂的。曾几何时。埃奇韦尔男爵四世-乔治-艾尔弗雷德-圣文森特-马什被害一案引起巨大轰动和好奇,而今一切已成旧事,皆被遗忘,取而代之的是更新的轰动一时的消息。人们谈起这案子时从未公开说及我的朋友-赫尔克里-波洛。我得说,这全都是由于他本人的意愿。他自己不想出现在案子里。也正如他本人所希望的,功劳就算到别人头上。更何况。按照波洛自己独特的观点,这案子是他的一个失败。 [点击阅读]
人是世上的大野鸡
作者:佚名
章节:15 人气:0
摘要:坑地阵亡战士纪念碑四周长满了玫瑰。这是一片茂密的灌木林。杂乱丛生,小草透不过气来。白色的小花开着,像纸一样卷起。花儿簌簌作响。天色破晓,就快天亮了。每天早上独自穿过马路去往磨坊的路上,温迪施数着一天的时光。在纪念碑前,他数着年头。每当自行车过了纪念碑后的第一棵杨树,他数着天数,从那儿他骑向同一个坑地。夜晚,每当温迪施锁上磨坊,他又数上一遍年头和天数。他远远地看着小小的白玫瑰、阵亡战士纪念碑和杨树。 [点击阅读]
人生的智慧
作者:佚名
章节:11 人气:0
摘要:出版说明叔本华(1788-1860)是德国着名哲学家,唯意志主义和现代悲观主义创始人。自称“性格遗传自父亲,而智慧遗传自母亲”。他一生未婚,没有子女,以狗为伴。他于年写了《附录与补遗》一书,《人生的智慧》是该书中的一部分。在书中他以优雅的文体,格言式的笔触阐述了自己对人生的看法。《人生的智慧》使沉寂多年的叔本华一举成名。 [点击阅读]
人类群星闪耀时
作者:佚名
章节:17 人气:0
摘要:作品简介StefanZweig斯蒂芬·茨威格茨威格于1881年出生在奥地利维也纳一个富裕的犹太工厂主家庭,青年时代曾在维也纳和柏林攻读哲学和文学,获得博士学位。从二十世纪二十年代起,茨威格便“以德语创作赢得了不让于英、法语作品的广泛声誉”。 [点击阅读]
人鱼
作者:佚名
章节:8 人气:0
摘要:眼前是突兀林立的岩石群。多摩河上游的这片布满岩石的区域,地势险峻,令垂钓者望而却步。几年前,曾发现一女子被人推下悬崖赤裸裸地嵌陷在岩石缝中。岩石区怪石嶙峋、地势凶险,当初,调查现场的警官也是费尽周折才踏进这片岩石区域的。一个少女划破清澈的溪流浮出水面。十四五岁的样子,赤身倮体,一丝不挂。望着眼前的情景,垂钓者的两颊不由得痉挛起来。直到方才为止,在不断敲打、吞噬着岩石的激流中还不曾出现过任何物体。 [点击阅读]
今天我不愿面对自己
作者:佚名
章节:11 人气:0
摘要:第一章我被传讯了。周四上午十点整。我总是经常被传讯:周二上午十点整,周六上午十点整,周三或者周一。几年就像一周似的,我感到惊讶的是,夏末一过,冬天又即将来临了。在去有轨电车的路上,结着白色浆果的灌木丛又从篱笆上垂挂下来了。像下面被缝上的珠光纽扣,也许一直长到地里,或者就像小馒头。对转动鸟嘴的白色鸟头来说,这些浆果太小了,但我还是忍不住想到白色鸟头。想得人直犯晕。 [点击阅读]
从地球到月球
作者:佚名
章节:28 人气:0
摘要:在南北战争时期,美国马里兰州中部的巴尔的摩城成立了一个很有势力的新俱乐部。我们知道,当时在这些以造船、经商和机械制造为业的人们中间,军事才能是怎样蓬勃地发展起来的。许多普普通通的商人,也没有受到西点军校的训练,就跨出他们的柜台,摇身一变,当上了尉官、校官,甚至将军,过了不久,他们在“作战技术”上就和旧大陆的那些同行不相上下,同时也和他们一样,仗着大量的炮弹、金钱和生命,打了几次胜仗。 [点击阅读]
他们来到巴格达
作者:佚名
章节:26 人气:0
摘要:一克罗斯毕上尉从银行里走出来,好象刚刚兑换完支票,发现自己存折上的钱比估计的还要多一些,因此满面春风,喜气溢于形色。克罗斯毕上尉看上去很自鸣得意,他就是这样一种人。他五短身材,粗壮结实,脸色红润,蓄着很短的带军人风度的小胡子,走起路来有点摇晃,衣着稍许有点惹人注目。他爱听有趣的故事,人们都很喜欢他。他愉快乐观,普普通通,待人和善,尚未结婚,没有什么超凡拔群之处。在东方,象克罗斯毕这样的人很多。 [点击阅读]
他杀的疑惑
作者:佚名
章节:9 人气:0
摘要:最早发现山桥启太郎死去的,是山桥的夫人佐代子。那天,山桥从早晨起就失去了踪影。其实,说“从早晨起”还不正确。山桥离开自己家的时候,是前一天晚上9点以后。他从公司下班回家,吃了晚饭以后,说有一些东西要写,便去了附近当作工作室的公寓里。山桥在学生时代起就喜欢写诗歌和小说,还亲自主恃着一份《同人》杂志,屡次在文艺类杂志的有奖征稿中人眩对他来说,写作几乎已经超越了纯兴趣的阶段。 [点击阅读]