评论
打印
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees,
眼看阳光明媚，树木忽然间长满了叶子，
just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
就像电影里的东西长得那么快，我就又产生了那个熟悉的信念，觉得生命随着夏天的来临又重新开始了。
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air.
有那么多书要读，这是一点，同时从清新宜人的空气中也有那么多营养要汲取。
I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities,
我买了十来本有关银行业、信贷和投资证券的书籍，
and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint,
一本本红色烫金封皮的书立在书架上，好像造币厂新铸的钱币一样，
promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew.
准备揭示迈达斯、摩根和米西纳斯的秘诀。
And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides.
除此之外，我还有雄心要读许多别的书。
I was rather literary in college -- one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the “Yale News.”--
我在大学的时候是喜欢舞文弄墨的——有一年我给《耶鲁新闻》写过一连串一本正经而又平淡无奇的社论
and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists,
现在我准备把诸如此类的东西重新纳入我的生活，重新成为那种最浅薄的专家。
the “well-rounded man.”
也就是“通才”。
This isn't just an epigram --
这并不只是一个俏皮的警句——
life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
只从一个窗口去观察，人生要成功得多。
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America.
纯粹出于偶然，我租的这所房子位于北美最离奇的社区。
It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York --
它地处纽约市正东那个喧闹的细长小岛上——
and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land.
那里除了其他的天然奇观以外，还有两个异乎寻常的地理构造。
Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay,
离城二十英里路，有一对巨大的鸡蛋般的半岛，外形一模一样，中间隔着一条小湾，
jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere,
一直延伸进西半球那片最恬静的咸水，
the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound.
这里是长岛海峡一处巨大的潮湿的场院。
They are not perfect ovals -- like the egg in the Columbus story,
它们并不是正椭圆形——而是像哥伦布故事里的鸡蛋一样，
they are both crushed flat at the contact end --
“鸡蛋”碰过的那头都是压碎了的——
but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead.
但是它们外貌的相似一定是上空飞过的海鸥惊异不已的原因。
To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
对于没有翅膀的人类来说，一个更加饶有趣味的现象是，这两个地方除了形状大小之外，在每一个方面都截然不同。
