Fifty Great American Short Stories美国短篇小说精粹50篇 英文原版 [平装] pdf epub mobi txt 电子书 下载 2025

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Milton Crane（密尔顿·克瑞恩） 著

出版社： Random House

ISBN：9780553272949

商品编码：19017069

包装：平装

出版时间：1984-08-01

页数：672

正文语种：英文

商品尺寸：17.27x10.41x2.54cm;0.3kg

内容简介

A brilliant, far-reaching collection of stories from Washington Irving to John Updike.

The Classic Stories
Edgar Allan Poe's Ms. Found in a Bottle, Bret Harte's The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Sherwood Anderson's Death in the Woods, Stephen Vincent Benét's By the Waters of Babylon.

The Little-Known Masterpieces
Edith Wharton's The Dilettante, Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley on the Popularity of Fireman, Charles M. Flandrau's A Dead Issue, James Reid Parker's The Archimandrite's Niece.

精彩书摘

On a stormy night, in the tempestuous times of the French Revolution, a young German was returning to his lodgings, at a late hour, across the old part of Paris. The lightning gleamed, and the loud claps of thunder rattled through the lofty narrow streets—but I should first tell you something about this young German.

Gottfried Wolfgang was a young man of good family. He had studied for some time at Gottingen, but being of a visionary and enthusiastic character, he had wandered into those wild and speculative doctrines which have so often bewildered German students. His secluded life, his intense application, and the singular nature of his studies, had an effect on both mind and body. His health was impaired; his imagination diseased. He had been indulging in fanciful speculations on spiritual essences, until, like Swedenborg, he had an ideal world of his own around him. He took up a notion, I do not know from what cause, that there was an evil influence hanging over him; an evil genius or spirit seeking to ensnare him and ensure his perdition. Such an idea working on his melancholy temperament produced the most gloomy effects. He became haggard and desponding. His friends discovered the mental malady preying upon him, and determined that the best cure was a change of scene; he was sent, therefore, to finish his studies amidst the splendors and gayeties of Paris.

Wolfgang arrived at Paris at the breaking out of the revolution. The popular delirium at first caught his enthusiastic mind, and he was captivated by the political and philosophical theories of the day: but the scenes of blood which followed shocked his sensitive nature, disgusted him with society and the world, and made him more than ever a recluse. He shut himself up in a solitary apartment in the Pays Latin, the quarter of students. There, in a gloomy street not far from the monastic walls of the Sorbonne, he pursued his favorite speculations. Sometimes he spent hours together in the great libraries of Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards of dusty and obsolete works in quest of food for his unhealthy appetite. He was, in a manner, a literary ghoul, feeding in the charnel-house of decayed literature.

Wolfgang, though solitary and recluse, was of an ardent temperament, but for a time it operated merely upon his imagination. He was too shy and ignorant of the world to make any advances to the fair, but he was a passionate admirer of female beauty, and in his lonely chamber would often lose himself in reveries on forms and faces which he had seen, and his fancy would deck out images of loveliness far surpassing the reality.

While his mind was in this excited and sublimated state, a dream produced an extraordinary effect upon him. It was of a female face of transcendent beauty. So strong was the impression made, that he dreamt of it again and again. It haunted his thoughts by day, his slumbers by night; in fine, he became passionately enamoured of this shadow of a dream. This lasted so long that it became one of those fixed ideas which haunt the minds of melancholy men, and are at times mistaken for madness.

Such was Gottfried Wolfgang, and such his situation at the time I mentioned. He was returning home late one stormy night, through some of the old and gloomy streets of the Marais, the ancient part of Paris. The loud claps of thunder rattled among the high houses of the narrow streets. He came to the Place de Greve, the square, where public executions are performed. The lightning quivered about the pinnacles of the ancient Hotel de Ville, and shed flickering gleams over the open space in front. As Wolfgang was crossing the square, he shrank back with horror at finding himself close by the guillotine. It was the height of the reign of terror, when this dreadful instrument of death stood ever ready, and its scaffold was continually running with the blood of the virtuous and the brave. It had that very day been actively employed in the work of carnage, and there it stood in grim array, amidst a silent and sleeping city, waiting for fresh victims.

Wolfgang's heart sickened within him, and he was turning shuddering from the horrible engine, when he beheld a shadowy form, cowering as it were at the foot of the steps which led up to the scaffold. A succession of vivid flashes of lightning revealed it more distinctly. It was a female figure, dressed in black. She was seated on one of the lower steps of the scaffold, leaning forward, her face hid in her lap; and her long dishevelled tresses hanging to the ground, streaming with the rain which fell in torrents. Wolfgang paused. There was something awful in this solitary monument of woe. The female had the appearance of being above the common order. He knew the times to be full of vicissitude, and that many a fair head, which had once been pillowed on down, now wandered houseless. Perhaps this was some poor mourner whom the dreadful axe had rendered desolate, and who sat here heart-broken on the strand of existence, from which all that was dear to her had been launched into eternity.

He approached, and addressed her in the accents of sympathy. She raised her head and gazed wildly at him. What was his astonishment at beholding, by the bright glare of the lightning, the very face which had haunted him in his dreams. It was pale and disconsolate, but ravishingly beautiful.
Trembling with violent and conflicting emotions, Wolfgang again accosted her. He spoke something of her being exposed at such an hour of the night, and to the fury of such a storm, and offered to conduct her to her friends. She pointed to the guillotine with a gesture of dreadful signification.

"I have no friend on earth!" said she.

"But you have a home," said Wolfgang.

"Yes—in the grave!"

The heart of the student melted at the words.

"If a stranger dare make an offer," said he, "without danger of being misunderstood, I would offer my humble dwelling as a shelter; myself as a devoted friend. I am friendless myself in Paris, and a stranger in the land; but if my life could be of service, it is at your disposal, and should be sacrificed before harm or indignity should come to you."

There was an honest earnestness in the young man's manner that had its effect. His foreign accent, too, was in his favor; it showed him not to be a hackneyed inhabitant of Paris. Indeed, there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted. The homeless stranger confided herself implicitly to the protection of the student.

He supported her faltering steps across the Pont Neuf, and by the place where the statue of Henry the Fourth had been overthrown by the populace. The storm had abated, and the thunder rumbled at a distance. All Paris was quiet; that great volcano of human passion slumbered for a while, to gather fresh strength for the next day's eruption. The student conducted his charge through the ancient streets of the Pays Latin, and by the dusky walls of the Sorbonne, to the great dingy hotel which he inhabited. The old portress who admitted them stared with surprise at the unusual sight of the melancholy Wolfgang, with a female companion.

On entering his apartment, the student, for the first time, blushed at the scantiness and indifference of his dwelling. He had but one chamber—an old-fashioned saloon—heavily carved, and fantastically furnished with the remains of former magnificence, for it was one of those hotels in the quarter of the Luxembourg palace, which had once belonged to nobility. It was lumbered with books and papers, and all the usual apparatus of a student, and his bed stood in a recess at one end.

When lights were brought, and Wolfgang had a better opportunity of contemplating the stranger, he was more than ever intoxicated by her beauty. Her face was pale, but of a dazzling fairness, set off by a profusion of raven hair that hung clustering about it. Her eyes were large and brilliant, with a singular expression approaching almost to wildness. As far as her black dress permitted her shape to be seen, it was of perfect symmetry. Her whole appearance was highly striking, though she was dressed in the simplest style. The only thing approaching to an ornament which she wore, was a broad black band round her neck, clasped by diamonds.

The perplexity now commenced with the student how to dispose of the helpless being thus thrown upon his protection. He thought of abandoning his chamber to her, and seeking shelter for himself elsewhere. Still he was so fascinated by her charms, there seemed to be such a spell upon his thoughts and senses, that he could not tear himself from her presence. Her manner, too, was singular and unaccountable. She spoke no more of the guillotine. Her grief had abated. The attentions of the student had first won her confidence. and then, apparently, her heart. She was evidently an enthusiast like himself, and enthusiasts soon understand each other.

In the infatuation of the moment, Wolfgang avowed his passion for her. He told her the story of his mysterious dream, and how she had possessed his heart before he had even seen her. She was strangely affected by his recital, and acknowledged to have felt an impulse towards him equally unaccountable. It was the time for wild theory and wild actions. Old prejudices and superstitions were done away; everything was under the sway of the "Goddess of Reason." Among other rubbish of the old times, the forms and ceremonies of marriage began to be considered superfluous bonds for honorable minds. Social compacts were the vogue. Wolfgang was too much of a theorist not to be tainted by the liberal doctrines of the day.

"Why should we separate?" said he: "our hearts are united; in the eye of reason and honor we are as one. What need is there of sordid forms to bind high souls together?"

The stranger listened with emotion: she had evidently received illumination...

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还可以。

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好书 我的眼光不会错的

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好书，在出差没时间研读

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英文原版名著，很好~~

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几个月后，查理的外貌和态度都有了巨大的变化。秃班不见了，羽毛也变成了毛绒绒的亮白色，喙子从灰粉状变成了晶亮的黑色，眼神中的恐惧和小心翼翼换成了志得意满的狡猾。查理真正的本性开始显露出来。他已经做好出击的准备。托平有时会从战场上回家来透一口气。晚餐前，我们总是坐在阳台天花板上吊下来的竹椅上喝上一两杯马提尼，一边冥想生命的神秘，一边享受中国南海上辉煌的落日。一天傍晚，海平线散射出最后一抹金色的阳光，镜子般的水面映射着腥红的云彩，变幻着无穷无尽的形状，龙、凤还有各种东方的神秘怪兽。我们正沉浸在这无尽的美景中，查理突然决定打破这神秘的气氛而加入我们的行列。他一直试图接近托平，但托平总是保持距离。他从未在情感上亲近过一只鸟，而且对我讲的这只神奇的鸟的故事表示怀疑。像我父亲一样，他认定我是把动物拟人化，而我解释查理的行为完全是同情心导致的主观偏见。不过查理将证明我是对的。喝完第一杯马提尼，托平舒服地享受着，允许执着的查理爬上他的腿，坐在他的膝盖上。查理温情脉脉地看着托平，用他最迷人的声音(模仿我的女儿罗宾)说：“你好查理。过得好吗？”托平有点不解：“我不是查理，我是托平，明白了吗？我是托平。”查理轻巧地摘走了马提尼中扎着橄榄的牙签，然后品了一下这甜辣椒。嗯！味道不错！他的桔黄冠子挺了起来，侧着脸看了看托平，眨了一下白色眼睑，字正腔圆地说，“嗨！托平！嗨！托平！”托平惊讶地看着查理。我又给他倒了杯马提尼，他举杯祝酒，“干杯，查理。”查理又叼走了一个浸着金酒的橄榄回应着托平：“干杯，查理。”

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不错??????

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书很不错，慢慢品味其中精髓！

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　　从那以后，吃饭时查理就坐在我旁边。他站在笼子顶上，这样他哪样菜都够得着。“这块给我，这块给你，希望你喜欢，查理，请别喊。”不久，陈一摇锣，查理会第一个喊：“开饭啦！”

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给老婆买的英文书，一个个小故事很不错