1705007193

1705007194 ● 普通人到了退休的年龄，因为对于世事冷淡（apathy），而且亲人凋零，生活孤寂（loneliness；老教授甫丧妻，这点以后就要说到），不免像一颗干瘪的葡萄，在藤上（on the vine）萎谢了，但是这位教授不然。本句用Far from开头，很见力量。普通人是这样的，他可不是这样。Dr. Bohrmann是主语。had a second blooming：第二次开花。第一次开花大约是在青春时期，那时人做事有劲，肯用心学习，老教授退休以后，重新表现青春的活力。blooming当然是和withering对比的。

1705007195

1705007196 ● observed：观察；也解作“发表意见”。it代表下面的“that”clause。amongst就是among：在这些人中间，有这样一个意见。colleagues：同事们。此字重音，在第一音节。idolatrous：崇拜的（此字之根是idol：偶像）。学生们平日把这位教授，敬崇之若神明。在庸手写来，这件事大约又需要一句句子，但是这里只用一个字就够了。

1705007197

1705007198 ● age是动词：年龄老下去（aging形容词：垂老，渐老）。gusto：（做事，做人）津津有味的精神。live to be a hundred：活到一百岁。

1705007199

1705007200 ● the end of his academic career：学术（教授）生涯的结束。looked on连后面的as：他把退休这件事只看作是生活一个阶段（one phase）的结束。career后面，有一个说明。两条横线的作用，等于括弧。an impressive one=an impressive career。impressive：给人深刻印象的，不平凡的。他教了几十年书，替他在学术圈子里挣来了国际上的声誉。him是indirect object；但是这种indirect object和普通indirect object不同。普通的间接宾语，可以说是省掉了介词to，这一种（语法书上称为dative of interest）间接宾语可以说是省掉了介词for，例如：

1705007201

1705007202 He has built me a house.（他替我造了一所房子。）

1705007203

1705007204 It will last the owner a lifetime.（用这件东西的人，用它一辈子也用不坏。）

1705007205

1705007206 ● the new one=the new phase。

1705007207

1705007208 ● he did so=he began the new one，先用了一个“when”clause，再把从句里的话，在主句重复一遍，这个办法可以使文字流利。

1705007209

1705007210 ● accoutrements（此字通常用复数形式）：配备。新的“配备”是些什么东西，下文有说明。

1705007211

1705007212 ● Change is the only stimulus：变化是唯一的刺激。这句话他是常常喜欢对学生们说的。他退休以后为怕精神颓唐，力求改变生活方式与生活环境（新的“配备”），以“改变”作为刺激自己的方法。

1705007213

1705007214 He took up the study of Japanese; he took up engraving and lettering (designed a new bookplate, designed a gravestone for his dead wife); he began to grow Persian melons under glass; he took up mycology, and mycophagy as well, sending his fidgety housekeeper off into shrill protests as he flirted with death by eating mushrooms gathered in cow pastures and on golf links. He abandoned chess for bridge, and two evenings a week played a cutthroat game with Miss Blossom Duveen, the bursar’s blond secretary, as his partner and as his opponents Mr. Street, the logician, and Mr. Street’s hopelessly scatterbrained wife.

1705007215

1705007216 ● took up the study of Japanese：开始研究日文。

1705007217

1705007218 ● engraving：镌刻（一种艺术）。lettering：刻美术字。

1705007219

1705007220 ● bookplate：藏书凭单。西洋藏书家，喜欢印一种凭单，粘贴在书的内封里。单上有图案画，并有“EX LIBRIS so-and-so”（某某之藏书）等字样。这位教授既然学了镌刻之术，便替自己设计（designed）了一种新的藏书凭单。gravestone：墓碑。他的太太已故，此处顺便提一笔。

1705007221

1705007222 ● grow（此处为及物动词）：培育。under glass：在花房（greenhouse）里种波斯瓜。

1705007223

1705007224 ● mycology：研究蕈菇这类东西的学问。这种学问，研究研究倒也无所谓，可是他吃起野蕈来了。mycophagy：普通字典中可能不载此字。此字源自希腊，myco原义是“蕈”，phagy原义是“吃”，两者连起来，就成“吃蕈”。

1705007225

1705007226 ● sending…off into protests：使（某人）提抗议。（send one crazy是英文成语：使某人发疯。）他那管家婆，原来就容易激动（fidgety），看见他从放牛场（pastures）和高尔夫球场（golf links）上找野蕈来吃，觉得这是在跟生命开玩笑（flirted with death：和死神调情），不由得尖声地大叫：使不得。

1705007227

1705007228 ● bridge：桥牌。原来下象棋的，现在改为桥牌。cutthroat（形容词）：竞争激烈的，谁也不肯饶谁的。（American College Dictionary引有cutthroat competition这样一个成语）。

1705007229

1705007230 ● bursar：（大学的）出纳主任。blond：金发的。这位秘书小姐是教授打桥牌的partner。Mr. Street和Miss Blossom Duveen一样，都是with的宾语。可是as his partner放在Duveen的后面，as his opponents（对手方）放在Mr. Street的前面，这样句法就不呆板。

1705007231

1705007232 ● logician：逻辑学家（逻辑教授）。hopelessly scatterbrained：心神不集中到不可救药的程度。这两个字一用，他们每星期两次牌局的情形，也稍为提到一点了。

1705007233

1705007234 But the radical thing about his new life was the house he had built for himself in the spring semester of his last year at the college. It was a house of tomorrow—cantilevered, half glass—six miles out on the prairies that confronted the mountain range in whose foothills lay Adams, the town where the college was. The house, though small and narrow, was long, and it looked like a ship, for there was a deck that went all the way around it; from certain points Dr. Bohrmann could see Pikes Peak, a hundred and fifty miles away, and from every point he could watch the multiform weather: there dark rain, here blinding sunshine, yonder a sulphurous dust storm, haze on the summit of one peak, a pillow of cloud concealing a second, hyaline light on the glacier of a third. The house amazed that nondescript, stick-in-the-mud Western town, which from the day it was founded, had been putting up the worst eyesores it could think of. Whoever on earth would have dreamed that the professor, absent-minded and old, riding a bicycle, wearing oldfangled gaiters and an Old World cape, would make such an angular nest for himself and drastically paint it bright pink? The incongruity between the man and his habitat could not possibly have been greater.

1705007235

1705007236 ● 上面这许多改变，还不算特别。根本（radical）改变的是他造了一所新房子。

1705007237

1705007238 ● a house of tomorrow：设计非常新颖的房子。cantilevered：这是建筑学上的名词。cantilever是“悬臂梁”，墙上横伸出来的梁，一头悬空。和两头有靠的正梁（beam）不同。他这座房子，可能是只用悬臂梁，不用正梁的。half glass：一半是玻璃。这两点都是新式建筑的特点。

1705007239

1705007240 ● prairies：大草原。他的房子造在大草原上，离镇六英里。mountain range：山脉。foothills：山脉下面的丘陵。他们的大学所在地，名Adams镇，镇倚山而建。

1705007241

1705007242 ● deck：甲板。that went all the way around it：房子的样子像船，周围有甲板，人可以在上面散步。went有“伸张”之意；around it=around the house。

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