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Phoebe laid the knife, the gun and cartridges beside Joe and turned away. She was well away from the stable when she heard the shot. She stopped then, and for a long moment she stood quiet, shaking in the cold.
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After her tears Phoebe slept, but she woke early. She lay quietly in bed, her body aching, her mind calm but filled with a clear despair.
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● cartridges：子弹。clear despair：清明的绝望。她觉得人生没有意义了，
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可是心头还是清清楚楚的，并不昏沉。
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She went out for fire wood and kindling, and coming back from the woodpile with her arms full she stopped above the pasture, shivering in the still, gray light of the morning. Below the pin oak Daisy lay placidly on the drying grass, untouched by tragedy, and for a long time Phoebe stood watching her from another world. Of course they can’t care, she thought; it’s part of their innocence. She thought of all the innocent ones—the cow and the dog, the horses and chickens—and she knew at last that she was hopelessly excluded, forever responsible. She turned away, lonely and chilled, but with her armful of firewood she went on into the kitchen, to kindle once more the comforting fire for breakfast.
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● kindling：引火之小木片。woodpile：木柴堆。
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● pin oak：橡树之一种。placidly：平静地。untouched by tragedy：（心）不为悲剧所拂扰。from another world=as if from another world：小牛死了，大牛本为其游伴，今竟若无其事，而女主人则中心悲苦，无复乐趣，如处在另一世界。
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● she thought的前后都是不加引号的直接叙述法；述其思想之内容：“当然它们（那些动物）是不在乎的，这就是它们天真里面的一部分。”既然天真，当然无挂无牵。
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● 下面接一句是全文主旨所在。她想起了那些动物都是无挂无牵的，可是她偏不然，她是“绝对没有希望归入它们那一类里去的”（hopelessly excluded），她是人就得负起做人的责任，责任永远在她身上，无法推脱（forever responsible）。
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● 这一种想法是幻想的破灭，也可以说是智慧（wisdom）的开始。鸢飞鱼跃，生机活泼，啸傲园林，逍遥自在，素为人生理想所寄，叵奈现实世界不容此种理想乎？Phoebe初居农村时，未尝不想过一种无挂无牵顺乎自然的生活，对于遨游田野追逐苹果香味的小牛，未尝不心向往之。曾几何时，小牛身陷绝境，丧生枪下；当初放纵之者，歆羡之者，今竟束手不能救，而且可能要割其皮而食其肉，“分尝一脔”矣。现实世界果如是之残酷乎？无论如何，Phoebe经此事变，心灵上可以说是成熟了。浪漫之梦既破，提起勇气，正视现实，负起做人的责任，其人生之正途乎？就文学流派而言：追求理想，无拘无束，是浪漫主义之文学也；知理想之终归幻灭，拘束之不可避免，此写实主义之文学也。写实主义在二十世纪文学为一大潮流，本文不过一小小的例子而已。
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● 最后Phoebe挟了木柴，进厨房去生火煮饭，又是一天枯燥的主妇生活要开始了。然而人生的意义是不是就在这枯燥平凡之中呢？
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现代英文选评注 A Visit to the Grandfather’s Grave扫墓
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James Turner Jackson
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本文选自Mentor Books（木铎丛书）出的New World Writing第一辑，原题“The Visit”，叙述一个老祖母拖了她的小孙儿上坟的故事。文中描写着重之处，在那个行将就木的老祖母对于坟墓的变态的恋念，和小孙儿对于这个“苦差使”的厌恶和恐惧，以及老少二人之间心理关系的紧张。全文颇不易读，这里所选几段，约当原文篇幅的十分之一，虽然深刻不如原来那篇小说，但仍不失为一篇很好的叙事文。作者杰克逊是美国密西根州人，曾在华盛顿州立大学执教，有短篇小说和论文多篇问世。
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In the winter, three years ago, his grandfather died. For almost a year, then, his grandmother never left town. She kept up her garden, and tended the ceremonial plants growing in the bay windows of her house.
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● keep up=keep in proper state：使园中花木茂盛。tended：照料，整修灌溉。ceremonial：礼节上应用的；预备供在坟前的（植物）。bay windows：凸窗；窗往外凸出，窗内因此可多吸收阳光。
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In the late afternoon, most often, the car was filled with flowers, and together they drove out to a nearby cemetery where his grandfather was. They were going to see (so she told him each time they went) how his grandfather’s grave was getting on. After the car was unloaded, and the flowers and shears and transplanting pots arranged in orderly rows beside the grave, she would send him down to the standpipe with a pail for water. In this manner, his work began. And when he finished the watering, she would set him to picking up fallen leaves and twigs. Not a moment was wasted.
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● drove out：驾车出去。cemetery：公墓。
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● how…was getting on：情形怎么样了。第二句的括弧中语：他们每次出去扫墓，祖母都要对他这样说。
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● unloaded：把车上的东西搬下来。shears：（刈花草用之）剪刀。pots：花盆。transplanting：移植用的；有些花得先种在盆里，然后再移植到地上去。arranged in orderly rows：整整齐齐地排列成行。arranged前面省去were一字。
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● standpipe：竖管（直立于地上的自来水管）。pail：水桶。祖母差他下去打水去，打了水来浇花（watering），浇完了花，再去捡地上的枯枝败叶。
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● set him to…：使他去做某一件工作。注意：to的后面跟动名词（或名词）。
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It was the year when his grandmother was still very clear, and very rigid about what she wanted. By her reckoning, every plot in the cemetery, save hers alone, was poorly tended. Each time a flower was cut or trimmed by her hand, she counted off the number of its blossoms. And pointing to an adjoining grave, she would often shake her head, and wonder how it was that people were so shiftless and lazy-minded and ignorant. She herself would be painstaking unto the last detail; and for this, if for no other reason, always brought with her a mail-order catalogue, to which she might have immediate recourse for pictures—together with complete descriptions—of monuments fashioned of enduring granite, perpetual marble.
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