【英文文学】Police!!!.docx

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1、【英文文学】Police!ForewordGive me no gold nor palacesNor quarts of gems in chalicesNor mention me in Who is WhoId rather roam abroad with youInvestigating sky and land,Volcanoes, lakes, and glacial sandId rather climb with all my legsTo find a nest of speckled eggs,Or watch the spotted spider spinOr see

2、a serpent shed its skin!Give me no star-and-garter blue!Id rather roam around with you.Flatten me not with flattery!Walk with me to the Battery,And see in glassy tanks the seals,The sturgeons, flounders, smelt and eelsDisport themselves in ichthyic curves And when it gets upon our nervesThen, while

3、our wabbling taxi honksIll tell you all about the Bronx,Where captive wild things mope and stareThrough grills of steel that bar each lairDoomed to imprisonment for life And you may go and take your wife.Come to the Park1 with me;Ill show you crass stupidityWhich sentences the hawk and foxTo inactiv

4、ity, and locksThe door of freedom on the lynxWhere puma pines and eagle stinks.Never a slavers fetid holdHas held the misery untoldThat crowds the great cats kennels whereTheir vacant eyes glare blank despairHalf crazed by sloth, half dazed by fearAll day, all night, year after year.To the swift, cl

5、ean things that cleave the airTo the swift, clean things that cleave the seaTo the swift, clean things that brave and dareForest and peak and prairie free,A cage to craze and stifle and stunAnd a fat man feeding a penny bunAnd a she-one giggling, “Aint it grand!”As she drags a dirty-nosed brat by th

6、e hand.PrefaceOn a beautiful day in spring as I was running as hard as I could run pursued by the New York police and a number of excited citizens, my mind, which becomes brilliantly active under physical exhilaration, began to work busily.I thought about all sorts of things: I thought about hard ti

7、mes and financial depression and about our great President who is in a class all alone with himself and soon to become extinct; I thought about art and why there isnt any when its talked about; I thought of macro-lepidoptera, of metagrammatism, monoliths, manicures, and monsoons.And all the time I w

8、as running as fast as I could run; and the faster I ran the more things I thought about until my terrific pace set my brain whizzing like a wheel.I felt no remorse at having published these memoirs of my life which was why the police and populace were pursuing me, maddened to frenzy by the fearless

9、revelation of mighty scientific truths in this little volume you are about to attempt to read. Ubicumque ars ostentatur, veritas abesse videtur!I thought about it clearly, calmly, concisely as I fled. The maddened shouts of the prejudiced populace did not disturb me. Around and around the Metropolit

10、an Museum of Art I ran; the inmates of that institution came out to watch me and they knew at a glance that I was one of them for they set up a clamor like a bunch of decoy ducks when one of their wild comrades comes whirling by.“Police! Police!” they shouted; but I went careering on uptown, afraid

11、only that the park squirrels might club together to corner me. There are corners in grain. Why not in but let that pass.I took the park wall in front of the great Mr. Carnegies cottage at a single bound. He stood on his terrace and shouted, “Police!” He was quite logical.The Equal Franchise Society

12、was having a May party in the park near the Harlem Mere. They had chosen the Honorable William Jennings Bryan as Queen of the May. He wore low congress-gaiters and white socks; he was walking under a canopy, crowned with paper flowers, his hair curled over his coat collar, the tips of his fingers we

13、re suavely joined over his abdomen.The moment he caught sight of me he shouted, “Police!”He was right. The cabinet lacked only me.And I might have consented to tarry might have allowed myself to be apprehended for political purposes, had not a nobler, holier, more imperative duty urged me northward

14、still.Though all Bloomingdale shouted, “Stop him!” and all Matteawan yelled, “Police!” I should not have consented to pause. Even the quackitudinous recognition spontaneously offered by the Metropolitan Museum had not been sufficient to decoy me to my fellows.I knew, of course, that I could find a s

15、anctuary and a welcome in many places in almost any sectarian edifice, any club, any newspaper office, any of the great publishers, any school, any museum; I knew that I would be welcomed at Columbia University, at the annex to the Hall of Fame, in the Bishops Palace on Morningside Heights there wer

16、e many places all ready to receive, understand and honour me.For a sufficiently crippled intellect, for a still-born brain, for the intellectually aborted, there is always a place on some editorial, sectarian, or educational staff.Try It!But I had other ideas as I galloped northward. The voiceless s

17、ummons of the most jealous of mistresses was making siren music in my ears. That coquettish jade, Science, was calling me by wireless, and I was responding with both legs.And so, at last, I arrived at the Bronx Park and dashed into the Administration Building where everybody rose and cheered me to t

18、he echo.I was at home at last, unterrified, undismayed, and ready again as always to dedicate my life to the service of Truth and to every caprice and whim of my immortal mistress, Science. But I dont want to marry her.Magna est veritas! Sed major et longinquo reverentia. Police!Being a few deathles

19、s truths concerning several mysteries recently and scientifically unravelled by a modest servant of Science.Quo quisque stultior, eo magis insolescit.The Third EyeAlthough the mans back was turned toward me, I was uncomfortably conscious that he was watching me. How he could possibly be watching me

20、while I stood directly behind him, I did not ask myself; yet, nevertheless, instinct warned me that I was being inspected; that somehow or other the man was staring at me as steadily as though he and I had been face to face and his faded, sea-green eyes were focussed upon me.It was an odd sensation

21、which persisted in spite of logic, and of which I could not rid myself. Yet the little waitress did not seem to share it. Perhaps she was not under his glassy inspection. But then, of course, I could not be either.No doubt the nervous tension incident to the expedition was making me supersensitive a

22、nd even morbid.Our sail-boat rode the shallow torquoise-tinted waters at anchor, rocking gently just off the snowy coral reef on which we were now camping. The youthful waitress who, for economys sake, wore her cap, apron, collar and cuffs over her dainty print dress, was seated by the signal fire w

23、riting in her diary. Sometimes she thoughtfully touched her pencil point with the tip of her tongue; sometimes she replenished the fire from a pile of dead mangrove branches heaped up on the coral reef beside her. Whatever she did she accomplished gracefully.As for the man, Grue, his back remained t

24、urned toward us both and he continued, apparently, to scan the horizon for the sail which we all expected. And all the time I could not rid myself of the unpleasant idea that somehow or other he was looking at me, watching attentively the expression of my features and noting my every movement.The sm

25、oke of our fire blew wide across leagues of shallow, sparkling water, or, when the wind veered, whirled back into our faces across the reef, curling and eddying among the standing mangroves like fog drifting.Seated there near the fire, from time to time I swept the horizon with my marine glasses; bu

26、t there was no sign of Kemper; no sail broke the far sweep of sky and water; nothing moved out there save when a wild duck took wing amid the dark raft of its companions to circle low above the ocean and settle at random, invisible again except when, at intervals, its white breast flashed in the sun

27、shine.Meanwhile the waitress had ceased to write in her diary and now sat with the closed book on her knees and her pencil resting against her lips, gazing thoughtfuly at the back of Grues head.It was a ratty head of straight black hair, and looked greasy. The rest of him struck me as equally unkemp

28、t and dingy a youngish man, lean, deeply bitten by the sun of the semi-tropics to a mahogany hue, and unusually hairy.I dont mind a brawny, hairy man, but the hair on Grues arms and chest was a rusty red, and like a chimpanzees in texture, and sometimes a wildly absurd idea possessed me that the man

29、 needed it when he went about in the palm forests without his clothes.But he was only a “poor white” a “cracker” recruited from one of the reefs near Pelican Light, where he lived alone by fishing and selling his fish to the hotels at Heliatrope City. The sail-boat was his; he figured as our officia

30、l guide on this expedition an expedition which already had begun to worry me a great deal.For it was, perhaps, the wildest goose chase and the most absurdly hopeless enterprise ever undertaken in the interest of science by the Bronx Park authorities.Nothing is more dreaded by scientists than ridicul

31、e; and it was in spite of this terror of ridicule that I summoned sufficient courage to organize an exploring party and start out in search of something so extraordinary, so hitherto unheard of, that I had not dared reveal to Kemper by letter the object of my quest.No, I did not care to commit mysel

32、f to writing just yet; I had merely sent Kemper a letter to join me on Sting-ray Key.He telegraphed me from Tampa that he would join me at the rendezvous; and I started directly from Bronx Park for Heliatrope City; arrived there in three days; found the waitress all ready to start with me; inquired

33、about a guide and discovered the man Grue in his hut off Pelican Light; made my bargain with him; and set sail for Sting-ray Key, the most excited and the most nervous young man who ever had dared disaster in the sacred cause of science.Everything was now at stake, my honour, reputation, career, for

34、tune. For, as chief of the Anthropological Field Survey Department of the great Bronx Park Zo?logical Society, I was perfectly aware that no scientific reputation can survive ridicule.Nevertheless, the die had been cast, the Rubicon crossed in a sail-boat containing one beachcombing cracker, one hot

35、el waitress, a pile of camping kit and special utensils, and myself!How was I going to tell Kemper? How was I going to confess to him that I was staking my reputation as an anthropologist upon a letter or two and a personal interview with a young girl a waitress at the Hotel Gardenia in Heliatrope C

36、ity?I lowered my sea-glasses and glanced sideways at the waitress. She was still chewing the end of her pencil, reflectively.She was a pretty girl, one Evelyn Grey, and had been a country school-teacher in Massachusetts until her health broke.Florida was what she required; but that healing climate w

37、as possible to her only if she could find there a self-supporting position.Also she had nourished an ambition for a postgraduate education, with further aspirations to a Government appointment in the Smithsonian Institute.All very worthy, no doubt in fact, particularly commendable because the wages

38、she saved as waitress in a Florida hotel during the winter were her only means of support while studying for college examinations during the summer in Boston, where she lived.Yet, although she was an inmate of Massachusetts, her face and figure would have ornamented any light-opera stage. I never lo

39、oked at her but I thought so; and her cuffs and apron merely accentuated the delusion. Such ankles are seldom seen when the curtain rises after the overture. Odd that frivolous thoughts could flit through an intellect dedicated only to science!The man, Grue, had not stirred from his survey of the At

40、lantic Ocean. He had a somewhat disturbing capacity for remaining motionless like a stealthy and predatory bird which depends on immobility for aggressive and defensive existence.The sea-wind fluttered his cotton shirt and trousers and the tattered brim of his straw hat. And always I felt as though

41、he were watching me out of the back of his ratty head, through the ravelled straw brim that sagged over his neck.The pretty waitress had now chewed the end of her pencil to a satisfactory pulp, and she was writing again in her diary, very intently, so that my cautious touch on her arm seemed to star

42、tle her.Meeting her inquiring eyes I said in a low voice:“I am not sure why, but I dont seem to care very much for that man, Grue. Do you?”She glanced at the waters edge, where Grue stood, immovable, his back still turned to us.“I never liked him,” she said under her breath.“Why?” I asked cautiously

43、.She merely shrugged her shoulders. She did it gracefully.I said:“Have you any particular reason for disliking him?”“Hes dirty.”“He looks dirty, yet every day he goes into the sea and swims about. He ought to be clean enough.”She thought for a moment, then:“He seems, somehow, to be fundamentally unc

44、lean I dont mean that he doesnt wash himself. But there are certain sorts of animals and birds and other creatures from which one instinctively shrinks not, perhaps, because they are materially unclean ”“I understand,” I said. After a silence I added: “Well, theres no chance now of sending him back,

45、 even if I were inclined to do so. He appears to be familiar with these latitudes. I dont suppose we could find a better man for our purpose. Do you?”“No. He was a sponge fisher once, I believe.”“Did he tell you so?”“No. But yesterday, when you took the boat and cruised to the south, I sat writing h

46、ere and keeping up the fire. And I saw Grue climbing about among the mangroves over the water in a most uncanny way; and two snake-birds sat watching him, and they never moved.“He didnt seem to see them; his back was toward them. And then, all at once, he leaped backward at them where they sat on a

47、mangrove, and he got one of them by the neck ”“What!”The girl nodded.“By the neck,” she repeated, “and down they went into the water. And what do you suppose happened?”“I cant imagine,” said I with a grimace.“Well, Grue went under, still clutching the squirming, flapping bird; and he stayed under.”“

48、Stayed under the water?”“Yes, longer than any sponge diver I ever heard of. And I was becoming frightened when the bloody bubbles and feathers began to come up ”“What was he doing under water?”“He must have been tearing the bird to pieces. Oh, it was quite unpleasant, I assure you, Mr. Smith. And when he came up and looked at me out of those very vitreo