Fifty Great American Short Stories美國短篇小說精粹50篇 英文原版 [平裝] pdf epub mobi txt 電子書 下載 2025

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Milton Crane（密爾頓·剋瑞恩） 著

圖書標籤:

• 美國文學
• 短篇小說
• 英文原版
• 經典文學
• 文學
• 小說
• 美國文化
• 英語學習
• 閱讀
• 精選集

齣版社： Random House

ISBN：9780553272949

商品編碼：19017069

包裝：平裝

齣版時間：1984-08-01

頁數：672

正文語種：英文

商品尺寸：17.27x10.41x2.54cm;0.3kg

內容簡介

A brilliant, far-reaching collection of stories from Washington Irving to John Updike.

The Classic Stories
Edgar Allan Poe's Ms. Found in a Bottle, Bret Harte's The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Sherwood Anderson's Death in the Woods, Stephen Vincent Benét's By the Waters of Babylon.

The Little-Known Masterpieces
Edith Wharton's The Dilettante, Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley on the Popularity of Fireman, Charles M. Flandrau's A Dead Issue, James Reid Parker's The Archimandrite's Niece.

精彩書摘

On a stormy night, in the tempestuous times of the French Revolution, a young German was returning to his lodgings, at a late hour, across the old part of Paris. The lightning gleamed, and the loud claps of thunder rattled through the lofty narrow streets—but I should first tell you something about this young German.

Gottfried Wolfgang was a young man of good family. He had studied for some time at Gottingen, but being of a visionary and enthusiastic character, he had wandered into those wild and speculative doctrines which have so often bewildered German students. His secluded life, his intense application, and the singular nature of his studies, had an effect on both mind and body. His health was impaired; his imagination diseased. He had been indulging in fanciful speculations on spiritual essences, until, like Swedenborg, he had an ideal world of his own around him. He took up a notion, I do not know from what cause, that there was an evil influence hanging over him; an evil genius or spirit seeking to ensnare him and ensure his perdition. Such an idea working on his melancholy temperament produced the most gloomy effects. He became haggard and desponding. His friends discovered the mental malady preying upon him, and determined that the best cure was a change of scene; he was sent, therefore, to finish his studies amidst the splendors and gayeties of Paris.

Wolfgang arrived at Paris at the breaking out of the revolution. The popular delirium at first caught his enthusiastic mind, and he was captivated by the political and philosophical theories of the day: but the scenes of blood which followed shocked his sensitive nature, disgusted him with society and the world, and made him more than ever a recluse. He shut himself up in a solitary apartment in the Pays Latin, the quarter of students. There, in a gloomy street not far from the monastic walls of the Sorbonne, he pursued his favorite speculations. Sometimes he spent hours together in the great libraries of Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards of dusty and obsolete works in quest of food for his unhealthy appetite. He was, in a manner, a literary ghoul, feeding in the charnel-house of decayed literature.

Wolfgang, though solitary and recluse, was of an ardent temperament, but for a time it operated merely upon his imagination. He was too shy and ignorant of the world to make any advances to the fair, but he was a passionate admirer of female beauty, and in his lonely chamber would often lose himself in reveries on forms and faces which he had seen, and his fancy would deck out images of loveliness far surpassing the reality.

While his mind was in this excited and sublimated state, a dream produced an extraordinary effect upon him. It was of a female face of transcendent beauty. So strong was the impression made, that he dreamt of it again and again. It haunted his thoughts by day, his slumbers by night; in fine, he became passionately enamoured of this shadow of a dream. This lasted so long that it became one of those fixed ideas which haunt the minds of melancholy men, and are at times mistaken for madness.

Such was Gottfried Wolfgang, and such his situation at the time I mentioned. He was returning home late one stormy night, through some of the old and gloomy streets of the Marais, the ancient part of Paris. The loud claps of thunder rattled among the high houses of the narrow streets. He came to the Place de Greve, the square, where public executions are performed. The lightning quivered about the pinnacles of the ancient Hotel de Ville, and shed flickering gleams over the open space in front. As Wolfgang was crossing the square, he shrank back with horror at finding himself close by the guillotine. It was the height of the reign of terror, when this dreadful instrument of death stood ever ready, and its scaffold was continually running with the blood of the virtuous and the brave. It had that very day been actively employed in the work of carnage, and there it stood in grim array, amidst a silent and sleeping city, waiting for fresh victims.

Wolfgang's heart sickened within him, and he was turning shuddering from the horrible engine, when he beheld a shadowy form, cowering as it were at the foot of the steps which led up to the scaffold. A succession of vivid flashes of lightning revealed it more distinctly. It was a female figure, dressed in black. She was seated on one of the lower steps of the scaffold, leaning forward, her face hid in her lap; and her long dishevelled tresses hanging to the ground, streaming with the rain which fell in torrents. Wolfgang paused. There was something awful in this solitary monument of woe. The female had the appearance of being above the common order. He knew the times to be full of vicissitude, and that many a fair head, which had once been pillowed on down, now wandered houseless. Perhaps this was some poor mourner whom the dreadful axe had rendered desolate, and who sat here heart-broken on the strand of existence, from which all that was dear to her had been launched into eternity.

He approached, and addressed her in the accents of sympathy. She raised her head and gazed wildly at him. What was his astonishment at beholding, by the bright glare of the lightning, the very face which had haunted him in his dreams. It was pale and disconsolate, but ravishingly beautiful.
Trembling with violent and conflicting emotions, Wolfgang again accosted her. He spoke something of her being exposed at such an hour of the night, and to the fury of such a storm, and offered to conduct her to her friends. She pointed to the guillotine with a gesture of dreadful signification.

"I have no friend on earth!" said she.

"But you have a home," said Wolfgang.

"Yes—in the grave!"

The heart of the student melted at the words.

"If a stranger dare make an offer," said he, "without danger of being misunderstood, I would offer my humble dwelling as a shelter; myself as a devoted friend. I am friendless myself in Paris, and a stranger in the land; but if my life could be of service, it is at your disposal, and should be sacrificed before harm or indignity should come to you."

There was an honest earnestness in the young man's manner that had its effect. His foreign accent, too, was in his favor; it showed him not to be a hackneyed inhabitant of Paris. Indeed, there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted. The homeless stranger confided herself implicitly to the protection of the student.

He supported her faltering steps across the Pont Neuf, and by the place where the statue of Henry the Fourth had been overthrown by the populace. The storm had abated, and the thunder rumbled at a distance. All Paris was quiet; that great volcano of human passion slumbered for a while, to gather fresh strength for the next day's eruption. The student conducted his charge through the ancient streets of the Pays Latin, and by the dusky walls of the Sorbonne, to the great dingy hotel which he inhabited. The old portress who admitted them stared with surprise at the unusual sight of the melancholy Wolfgang, with a female companion.

On entering his apartment, the student, for the first time, blushed at the scantiness and indifference of his dwelling. He had but one chamber—an old-fashioned saloon—heavily carved, and fantastically furnished with the remains of former magnificence, for it was one of those hotels in the quarter of the Luxembourg palace, which had once belonged to nobility. It was lumbered with books and papers, and all the usual apparatus of a student, and his bed stood in a recess at one end.

When lights were brought, and Wolfgang had a better opportunity of contemplating the stranger, he was more than ever intoxicated by her beauty. Her face was pale, but of a dazzling fairness, set off by a profusion of raven hair that hung clustering about it. Her eyes were large and brilliant, with a singular expression approaching almost to wildness. As far as her black dress permitted her shape to be seen, it was of perfect symmetry. Her whole appearance was highly striking, though she was dressed in the simplest style. The only thing approaching to an ornament which she wore, was a broad black band round her neck, clasped by diamonds.

The perplexity now commenced with the student how to dispose of the helpless being thus thrown upon his protection. He thought of abandoning his chamber to her, and seeking shelter for himself elsewhere. Still he was so fascinated by her charms, there seemed to be such a spell upon his thoughts and senses, that he could not tear himself from her presence. Her manner, too, was singular and unaccountable. She spoke no more of the guillotine. Her grief had abated. The attentions of the student had first won her confidence. and then, apparently, her heart. She was evidently an enthusiast like himself, and enthusiasts soon understand each other.

In the infatuation of the moment, Wolfgang avowed his passion for her. He told her the story of his mysterious dream, and how she had possessed his heart before he had even seen her. She was strangely affected by his recital, and acknowledged to have felt an impulse towards him equally unaccountable. It was the time for wild theory and wild actions. Old prejudices and superstitions were done away; everything was under the sway of the "Goddess of Reason." Among other rubbish of the old times, the forms and ceremonies of marriage began to be considered superfluous bonds for honorable minds. Social compacts were the vogue. Wolfgang was too much of a theorist not to be tainted by the liberal doctrines of the day.

"Why should we separate?" said he: "our hearts are united; in the eye of reason and honor we are as one. What need is there of sordid forms to bind high souls together?"

The stranger listened with emotion: she had evidently received illumination...

評分☆☆☆☆☆

學習下遣詞用句，充充電

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還沒看

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質量很好，送貨及時，非常喜歡

評分☆☆☆☆☆

非常好

評分☆☆☆☆☆

非常喜歡，再生紙很有味道。書裏麵也沒有漏印和錯印

評分☆☆☆☆☆

挺不錯的一本書，會好好看看。

評分☆☆☆☆☆

。　　葛二郎氣忿地道：“那麼，莫非就這麼算瞭不成？”　　“當然不能這麼就算瞭！”　　“堡主的意思……”　　“當年我們五兄弟，如今隻剩下二人。”　　他恨恨地道：“老三‘煉魂刀’雲中令、老四‘金鈴小瘟神’夏侯忠，以及老五‘飛流星’貫大野都先後死瞭！”　　“老實說！”　　他咬瞭一下牙道：“這三個人死不死都沒有什麼大作為，隻是我心裏始終懷念著的一個人，卻一直不見他來！”　　“堡主指的是……”　　“是我拜兄‘龍捲風’鮑韆裏！”　　“鮑大爺不是聽說已經齣瞭傢……”　　“不錯，我們兄弟五人當中，他的悟性最高，功夫也最深！”　　“比之堡主如何？”　　“現在是不知道，當年，是比我強得多！”　　說到這裏，他頓瞭一下道：“我開始習劍術的思想，就是他疏導我的！”　　“這麼說，鮑爺如今也必是劍術中人瞭？”　　“我也是這麼在想！”　　瀋海月振作著精神，說道：“現在我心裏亂得很，韆頭萬緒……除瞭本身必須要在極短的時間裏調養傷勢，此外，內外的防務，更不能有須臾大意！”　　“這一點堡主大可放心，我早已吩咐下去瞭！”　　“摘星堡的五座宮堡，必須改變五行的方位，我也由即日起，稱居嚮地室，另外通下山下之五處秘道，暫時要關閉四條，僅留通嚮中宮之一處！”　　他的思維的確很縝密，設想得

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　　“查理就是查理”，她說著，聳瞭聳瘦小的肩膀，“你想要和我們一樣的待遇。為什麼他不能上桌吃飯？”她把一塊水牛排遞給查理。

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很好。，。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。