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。

1705007243

1705007244 ● Pikes Peak：Rocky Mountains（后面要讲到）的高峰之一。在“甲板”上散步，从某几处远望，可见高峰矗立。可是无论从那一点望出去，四时昼夜天气之变幻，尽收眼底（multiform：形状有多种的）。那边黑沉沉的在下雨；这边太阳亮得叫人睁不开眼睛，再远一点（yonder）是尘土飞扬，黄而且热，同硫磺相仿（sulphurous）；某一个山峰顶上是暖暖雾气；巨云一朵（pillow是枕头，好譬喻）把另一个山头遮掩住了；再有一个山峰上是冰河一片，发出玻璃样的光（hyaline light）。

1705007245

1705007246 ● 镇上的人（town）看了这座奇怪的房子大为惊奇。原来他们那个处在美国西部的镇，落后而不随时代前进，好像是插在泥里一样（stick-in-the-mud），外表也是非驴非马的难看（nondescript）。eyesores：看了使人眼睛不舒服的东西。镇上的人能够想到有多难看的房子，就造（putting up）多难看的。

1705007247

1705007248 ● 这样一个教授，怎么会造这样一座奇形怪状的房子（angular nest），而且更过激地把它漆成明亮的粉红色呢？（drastically：激烈地。）

1705007249

1705007250 ● 这一句里面还把教授的服饰，顺便描写了一下。他是骑脚踏车的，腿上扎了老式的裹腿（oldfangled gaiters），身上披了一种旧式披风（cape）。Old World原指旧世界（东半球），这种披风该是欧洲人的服饰，美国人很少穿的。披风裹腿都是骑脚踏车时候的装束。

1705007251

1705007252 ● habitat：住地。这样一个老派的老人，住这样一座新派的房子，其不调和（incongruity）已达极点（不可能有更不调和的东西了）。

1705007253

1705007254 Imagine this character, with his silver beard, wearing a mussed green tweed suit, those gaiters, a stiff-collared shirt, a Tyrolian hat, sitting in a black sling chair on the front deck of this gleaming, youthful house, drinking ginger beer out of an earthenware mug and looking through binoculars at eagles and the weather. Or look at him pottering in his pretty Oriental garden, shading himself with the kind of giant black bumbershoot one associates with hotel doormen in a pouring rain. No matter where you placed him in that house, he simply would not match. It was the joke of Adams, but a good-natured one, for Dr. Bohrmann was the pet of the town.

1705007255

1705007256 ● this character：这个人，这个“角色”。character：行为乖僻的人。（He is a character：他是个怪人。）

1705007257

1705007258 ● mussed（美国俗话）：皱而脏的；邋遢的。tweed：毛糙的花呢。suit：西装。those gaiters：上面所说的裹腿。stiff-collared：硬领。Tyrolian：大约是指奥地利Tyrol地方的。这种帽子，以及种种打扮，都是旧式的。

1705007259

1705007260 ● sling chair：可折叠的椅子。gleaming, youthful：这两个字形容这座粉红色的新派房子，很贴切。

1705007261

1705007262 ● ginger beer：一种饮料，香港人称作“姜啤”。earthenware mug：陶器大杯。binoculars：双目望远镜。eagles：此字点明了远处的高山和辽阔的空间。

1705007263

1705007264 ● pottering：吊而郎当地工作。Oriental garden：中国式或日本式的花园布置，在美国是时髦玩意。

1705007265

1705007266 ● bumbershoot：一种大帽子，可张开收拢如伞。教授在花园里作杂工，就戴这样一顶帽子，以避阳光（shading himself）。此字后面省了一个关系代名词。这种帽子通常是旅馆的看门人在大雨倾盆（pouring rain）时候戴的，我们（one）看见这种帽子，就会把它同那种看门人联在一起。associates：联想。

1705007267

1705007268 ● placed：不论你把他“放”在这座房子的什么地方，他总是不相称的。“你”是指读者，前面两句用命令式，也是请读者“想象”，请你来看。

1705007269

1705007270 ● joke：镇上的人把这座房子引为笑谈。可是笑话里面并不含有挖苦的成分（good-natured），因为镇上的人都喜欢这位教授。pet：被人爱抚的动物（或人）。

1705007271

1705007272 Dr. Bohrmann and his wife, who died two years before his retirement, had arrived in Colorado from Freiburg by way of Montreal, where, just as he was beginning to make his presence felt at the university, he was halted in his stride by a sudden, astounding hemorrhage of the lungs. When, after seventeen wan, lengthy months, he was discharged from the sanitorium, not as cured but as arrested, his careful doctors counseled him to go West, to the Rocky Mountains, under whose blue, bright skies he could, in time, rout the last bacterium. On their further recommendation, he applied for an appointment at Nevilles College, since Adams was famous for the particular salubrity of its air. And providence was pleased to accommodate him, having a few months earlier created a vacancy on the staff through the death—from tuberculosis—of a young instructor.

1705007273

1705007274 ● 第一句所包含的内容又很丰富。教授太太是在他退休之前两年故世的；他们俩本来是从德国的Freiburg地方来到美洲，卜居在美国的Colorado州。在来美国之前，曾在加拿大的Montreal教过一阵书。by way of：经过（Montreal来到Colorado）。在Montreal的大学教书刚刚露点头角（to make his presence felt：使自己的“存在”被人家觉得；使人家知道有他这样一个青年教师），他忽然咯血。hemorrhage of the lungs：肺出血。his stride：他的大踏步往前迈进（教育界的地位蒸蒸日上），忽然被咯血所阻止。sudden, astounding：突如其来的，吓人的。

1705007275

1705007276 ● 这许多事情，要写在一句之内，不是一件容易的事情。读者如要揣摩何谓“用英文思想”（to think in English），对于这种句子应该细心模仿。作者风格的特点还是她的松散自然，从容不迫。她并不因为句子内容丰富而显得手忙脚乱，无法应付。所以如此者，恐怕是因为她多用loose construction的缘故。讲起教授的太太，作者就随随便便地插一个定浯从句（non-restrictive clause），说明她已经死了。句子到Montreal本来可以完了，作者又加了个定语从句（where…），说明他的如日方升的事业，忽受扼于肺疾。中国学生作文时如能把定语从句任意活用，于文字通畅之道，已思过半矣。

1705007277

1705007278 ● 教授咯血后，在疗养院（sanitorium）里住了十七个月（过了十七个惨淡[wan]漫长的月），此后他出院了（discharged：释放），病没有医好，只是算已经停止恶化（arrested：已被遏止）；他的医生（careful：怕他旧病复发）劝他到西部去，到落矶山去。说到这里，作者为维持一贯的loose construction的作用，又用了一个定语从句。落矶山区，天空明亮作纯蓝色。他住在那里，隔了相当时候，可以把体内最后一个结核杆菌（bacterium）消灭（rout：击溃）。本句下半句连用好几个comma：计West后有一个，Mountains后有一个，blue后有一个，could后有一个，time后有一个。这许多逗点使句子的进行缓慢，吞吞吐吐，有言尽而意不尽之妙。若求句子爽利，当然不是用这个写法的了。

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