【英文文学】Left to Themselves.docx
《【英文文学】Left to Themselves.docx》由会员分享,可在线阅读,更多相关《【英文文学】Left to Themselves.docx(123页珍藏版)》请在得力文库 - 分享文档赚钱的网站上搜索。
1、【英文文学】Left to ThemselvesPREFACE.A preface to a little book of this sort is an anomaly. Consequently it should be understood the sooner that these fore-words are not intended for any boys or girls that take up Left to Themselves. It is solely for the benefit of the adult reader led by curiosity or ca
2、refulness to open the book. The young reader will use his old privilege and skip it.It was lately observed, with a good deal of truth, that childhood and youth in their relations to literature are modern discoveries. To compare reading for the boys or girls of to-day with that purveyed even twenty-f
3、ive years ago, in quantity and quality, is a trite superfluity.But it has begun to look as if catering to this discovery of what young minds relish and of what they absorb has gone incautiously far. There exists a good measure of forgetfulness that children, after all is said, are little men and lit
4、tle women, with hearts and heads, as well as merely imaginations to be tickled. Undoubtedly these last must be stirred in the story. But there is always a large element of the young reading public to whom character in fiction, and a definite idea of human nature through fiction, and the impression o
5、f downright personality through fiction, are the main interestsperhaps unconsciouslyand work a charm and influence good or bad in a very high degree. A child does not always live in and care for the eternal story, story, story, incident, incident, incident, of literature written for him. There are p
6、lenty of philosophers not yet arrived at tail-coats or long frocks. They sit in the corners of the library or school-room. They think out and feel the personality in narrative deeply. This element, apart from incident, in a story means far more to impress and hold6 and mold than what happens. Indeed
7、, in the model story for young readersone often says it, but often does not succeed in illustrating itthe clear embodiment of character is of the first importance, however stirring or however artistically treated or beneficial the incidental side. Jack feels more than he says from the personal conta
8、ct, feels more, may be, than he knows; and Jill is surely apt to be as sensitive as Jack.Has there not little by little come to be a little too much of kindly writing down to childhood and to youth? of writing down to it until we are in danger of losing its level and getting below it? Is not thought
9、less youth more thoughtful than our credit extends to it? Certainly a nice sense of the balance between sugar and pill seems needed just nowadmitting the need of any actual pill. Children, after the earliest period, are more serious and finer and more perceptive natures than we may have come to allo
10、wing, or for which we may have come to working. We forget the dignity of even the young heart and mind. Light-hearted youth does not necessarily mean light-headed youth.This storywith apology for such a preambleis written in the aim at deferring to the above ideas; and, furthermore, at including in
11、the process one or two literary principles closely united to them. It will be found its writer hopes to embody study, as well as story, for the thoughtful moments in young lives, on whose intelligences daily clearly break the beauty and earnestness of human life, of resolute character, of unselfish
12、friendship and affection, and of high aim. To them, and of course to all adult readers, who do not feel themselves out of sympathy with the idealizings and fair inclusions of ones early time in this world, what follows is offered.New York City, February, 1891.CHAPTER I.MR. SIPS APPEARANCE AND DISAPP
13、EARANCEPHILIP AND GERALD BREAK ICE IN SUMMER.Mr. Patrick Sip had seated himself by the side of the brook that purled through the deep green ravine lying about three miles back of the Ossokosee House. Mr. Sip was not a guest at that new and flourishing summer resort. Mr. Sip, indeed, had hardly found
14、 himself a welcome guest anywhere within five or six years. He possessed a big, burly figure, a very unshaven and sunburnt face, and a suit of clothes once black, when upon the back of an earlier wearer, but long since faded to a dirty brown. Mr. Sip never used an umbrella nowadays, although he exer
15、cised much in the open air. Upon his unkempt hair slanted a tattered10 straw hat. Beside him lay a thickish walking-stick without any varnish. There was one thing which Mr. Sip had not about him, as any body would have inferred at a glance, although it is often difficult to detect by sighta good cha
16、racter. In short, Mr. Sip looked the complete example of just what he wasa sturdy, veteran tramp of some thirty summers and winters, who had not found through honest labor a roof over his head or a morsel between his bristly lips since his last release from some one of the dozen work-houses that his
17、 presence had graced.“Humph!” said Mr. Sip, half aloud, as he changed his position so as to let his bare feet sink deeper in the rippling creek (Mr. Sip was laving them), “I see plenty o water around here, but there aint nothin in sight looks like bread. Plague them turnips! Raw turnips aint no sort
18、 o a breakfast for a gentlemans stomach. Is they, now?”He splashed his feet about in the pure cold water, by no means to cleanse them from the dust of the highway, but simply because it was easier to drop them into the stream than to hold them out as he sat on the abrupt bank. He11 whistled a part o
19、f a tune and seemed to forget having put his question to the wrens and wagtails in the sassafras.“If, now, I could jist stick out my hand and pull a ham sangwich off o that there useless little tree,” pursued Mr. Sip, complainingly; “or if you could sort o lay here an meditate an presenly find a goo
20、d-sized pan o cold victuals a-comin a-floatin up.”Neither of these attractive phenomena seeming likely to occur immediately, Mr. Sip sighed as if injured, shook his head, and said with decided temper, “Ugh, natur! They talk so much about natur in them books anan churches, an plice courts, an sich. W
21、hats there nice about natur, Id like to know, when a man can keep company with natur as stiddy as I do an never git so much as his reglar meals out o her one day in the week? Natur, as fur as Ive found out, dont mean nothing cept wild blackberries in season. I dont want no more to do with natur!” Mr
22、. Sip concluded with an angry slap at a huge horsefly that had lighted upon his ankle, and uttered his favorite exclamation, “My name aint Sip!”which, although he meant the phrase merely as an expletive when12 he was particularly put out over any matter, happened to be the case.Just at that moment M
23、r. Sip looked across to the opposite bank of the creek and discovered that he and the horsefly were not alone. A boy was standing rather further up the stream with a fishing-rod in his hand observing the odd figure this wandering philosopher upon nature cut. The boy appeared to be in the neighborhoo
24、d of twelve years of age. He had a trim figure and fair hair, and the sunlight on it and through a green branch of a young maple behind him made the brightest spots of color in the somber little chasm. On his young face were mingled expressions of amusement and disgust as to Mr. Sip. Across his arm
- 配套讲稿:
如PPT文件的首页显示word图标,表示该PPT已包含配套word讲稿。双击word图标可打开word文档。
- 特殊限制:
部分文档作品中含有的国旗、国徽等图片,仅作为作品整体效果示例展示,禁止商用。设计者仅对作品中独创性部分享有著作权。
- 关 键 词:
- 英文文学 【英文文学】Left to Themselves 英文 文学 Left
限制150内