1705035980
1705035981
“生活教给我的最宝贵的教训是什么？”是对人性的坚定信念。尽管人会犯罪，人会疯狂，但我依然对人性充满信心。因为疯狂是果，不是因。
1705035982
1705035983
二
1705035984
1705035985
现在，让我们来回答第二个问题：“如果请你给一位年轻朋友一些建议，来帮助他平稳度过生命中最艰难的时期，你会给他什么建议？”
1705035986
1705035987
这个问题需要一本书才能回答，一篇文章回答不了。但如果要我勉为其难地回答的话，首先我要强调约束自己的重要性。一个人无休止地探求每件事的前因后果并不好。要生活得幸福，就必须建立在严格的原则之上。我甚至要说，是什么原则并不重要，重要的是，这些原则是可靠的、稳定不变的；而且我们不能打折扣。我在这里说的并不是宗教信条。诗人拜伦说：“教义是一个人和他的创造者之间的事。”我说的是那些自愿的行为，必须建立在稳固的基础之上，依照严格的原则生活。宗教生活的原则、工作的原则、每一种活动的原则——这些都一样有益，只要你全心全意信奉这些原则。
1705035988
1705035989
达到心理平衡和道德完善的另一个条件，在我看来，是计划的一致性和延续性。年轻人会受到各种机会的诱惑，而机会是无限的。限制一个年轻人的选择会激怒他。他想拥有各种朋友，踏上每一次可能的旅行，拥抱所有的学问，尝试每一种事业，经历各种爱情。但生活的一个条件是，人必须限制自己；他必须做出选择。那时，而且只有那时，他才能够深入生活，稳步向前。
1705035990
1705035991
我想，这些就是我对这两个问题的回答——如果要我回答的话。
1705035992
1705035993
（余苏凌 译）
1705035994
1705035996
11 A PAIR OF WOODPECKERS
1705035997
1705035998
A PAIR OF WOODPECKERS, by an anonymous contributor, in The Atlantic Monthly magazine, Vol. CLII. No. 5, pp. 637, 638, November. 1933.
1705035999
1705036000
I had been reading in Hudson’s Green Mansions that very afternoon, and as I walked along the highway that stretched like a gray sword slash through the exuberant foliage with which a wet June had clothed the forest of broad-leaved maple, alder, willow, and ash that had taken possession of the logged-off land beyond my ranch, I recalled the graceful antics of a couple of birds that the mythical Abel observed during his flight with Rima to the land of her birth.
1705036001
1705036002
As if to continue my mind picture, I saw before me a pair of woodpeckers behaving in an extraordinary way. The male was clinging to the side of a dead alder stub, apparently making love in a most excited fashion to his mate, only the head and shoulders of whom were visible. Seeing me, he dipped away, woodpecker fashion, among the trees that rose like green thunderheads above the general level of the forest.
1705036003
1705036004
The female remained, still showing only the head and neck from behind the stub, and eyed me in that breathless, frozen stillness so characteristic of a frightened bird. Three automobiles roared past like huge demented beetles, but she did not stir.
1705036005
1705036006
Shouldering my way into the rank brake ferns, I came within twenty feet of her. She was still watching my every movement when the male returned and with much pomp and ceremony proffered her a fat white grub. The acceptance of the choice morsel was accompanied by so much chattering on both sides, and elaborate curtsying on the part of the male, that I concluded that “the sauce to meat is ceremony” among woodpeckers quite as much as among Scotch thanes.
1705036007
1705036008
Making my way still farther into the ferns, I discovered that the female was really on her nest, from which her head and neck projected, although I knew from the many holes in “punky” maples I had investigated as a boy that the excavation was a good six inches deep, and that she was occupying its mouth for some special reason. When on the job, she undoubtedly was incubating eggs.
1705036009
1705036010
I soon discovered why she was not sitting on those eggs. As in all well-regulated families, each member of the partnership had assumed certain duties. She was to hatch the eggs, and he, in vulgar phrase, was to “bring home the bacon.” Apparently he was not fulfilling his part of the agreement. He had scarcely disappeared into the forest when she began a rapid, high-keyed chatter, evidently begging for more grubs. She kept this up for several minutes, occasionally opening her mouth wide, as if gasping for breath. When, in spite of her coaxing, the male did not return, she changed her tactics. Pitching her voice on a much lower key, she kept up a staccato calling that reverberated through the forest.
1705036011
1705036012
Still her provider did not appear. Apparently the cold weather was not producing the usual crop of grubs. With her neck thrust far out of the hole, she called peremptorily again and again, occasionally tilting her head to listen. Disappointed, she flounced back into the nest, remained there for a few moments, and then, reappearing, began all over again the high-keyed coaxing. When at the end of a good twenty minutes the male did come bustling back with a grub, she snatched it from his beak, swallowed it whole, and before it was fairly down began to scold him like a fishwife.
1705036013
1705036014
Somewhat abashed, the male withdrew to a dead branch on the other side of the stub; but she sensed the fact that he was loafing there, and craning her head round as far as she could without falling out of the nest, resumed her recriminations.
1705036015
1705036016
Like most fathers when under fire, his woodpeckership assumed an indifferent air, as if to say, “I don’t mind your senseless chatter in the least”; but the head was no sooner withdrawn than he made off into the forest through a drizzle that had increased to a downpour. He had scarcely disappeared before out again came the head with the red crown and pale orange stripes above the eyes curved like Mephistophelean eyebrows, and the coaxing began all over again. I noticed that the opening was slightly V-shaped at the bottom, that it faced away from the prevailing storms but toward the sun.
1705036017
1705036018
Again Father Woodpecker did not return at the expected time （apparently at the end of every ten minutes）, and again Madam Woodpecker flounced about as is the immemorial custom of angry females. She snapped viciously at a long-legged fly that was unwise enough to light within reach of her sharp black beak; then in sheer vexation she tried to eat fragments of the punky wood about the edge of the nest. These she would taste for a little and then spit out disgustedly.
1705036019
1705036020
Suddenly her mood changed. She sat quite still, and, as if she had never seen me before, regarded me with gentle curiosity, occasionally winking her dark eyes in a most charming fashion. Then she cocked her head to one side and listened, and, although my dull ears could distinguish no sound different from the subdued and all-pervading murmur of the forest, began once more the high-keyed chatter. In a few moments a sadly bedraggled woodpecker came undulating through the rain, and once more clung to the stub at the side of the nest. But his spouse was now too angry to take the silver-gray fly proffered her. Raising her voice to something like a scream, she turned loose upon him a torrent of abuse before she swallowed it, and as soon as it was down resumed her tongue-lashing.
1705036021
1705036022
But masculine endurance has its limitations, even among woodpeckers. The faithful provider, dripping and bedraggled after a prolonged hunt for grubs in some cheerless corner of the forest, suddenly flicked his tail, and, flying up a few yards to the dead branch of a fire-blasted maple, began to “talk back.” He was drab, unlovely, smaller than his smartly decorated partner, and with the compact and thoroughly utilitarian body which characterizes an age-old serving class, from insects to men. What he said was short, crisp, and, I suspect, very much to the point.
1705036023
1705036024
And right there came an exhibition of the superior nature of female intelligence. Madam quickly withdrew into the nest, doubtless resolved to remain there until the storm should blow over. Father Woodpecker, perceiving that he lacked an audience, angrily jerked his wet wings a few times, apparently to convince himself that he really was of some importance, and then dipped into the woods again in search of more grubs.
1705036025
1705036026
Notes
1705036027
1705036028
Hudson’s “Green Mansions.” William Henry Hudson （1841-1922）, English naturalist and author, whose Green Mansions is his classic romance of the tropical forest.
1705036029
[
上一页 ]
[ :1.70503598e+09 ]
[
下一页 ]