洛根·皮爾索爾·史密斯/Logan Pearsall Smith
洛根·皮爾索爾·史密斯（1865—1946），生於美國費城，但大半生在英國度過，主要致力於英國語言的研究。主要作品有《亨利·沃頓爵士傳記》、《讀莎士比亞》、《彌爾頓和他的現代評論家》、《難忘的年代》等。本文是一篇圍繞玫瑰展開的一個觸動人心的愛情故事。
The old lady had always been proud of the great rose-tree in her gar den,and was fond of telling how it had grown from a cutting she had bro ught years before from Italy,when she was first married.She and her hu sband had been travelling back in their carriage from Rome (it was befor e the time of railways),and on a bad piece of road south of Siena they had broken down,and had been forced to pass the night in a little house by the roadside.The accommodation was wretched of course;she had spent a sleepless night,and rising early had stood,wrapped up,at her window,with the cool air blowing on her face,to watch the dawn.She could st ill,after all these years,remember the blue mountains with the bright moon above them,and how a far-off town on one of the peaks had graduall y grown whiter and whiter,till the moon faded,the mountains were touch ed with the pink of the rising sun,and suddenly the town was lit as by an illumination,one window after another catching and reflecting the su n's beams,till at last the whole little city twinkled and sparkled up in the sky like a nest of stars.
That morning,finding they would have to wait while their carriage w as being repaired,they had driven in a local conveyance up to the city on the mountain,where they had been told they would find better quarter s;and there they had stayed two or three days.It was one of the miniat ure Italian cities with a high church,a pretentious piazza,a few narro w streets and little palaces,perched,all compact and complete,on the top of a mountain,within an enclosure of walls hardly larger than an En glish kitchen garden.But it was full of life and noise,echoing all day and all night with the sounds of feet and voices.