約翰·博因頓·普裏斯特利/ John Boynton Priestley
約翰·博因頓·普裏斯特利（1894—1984），英國小說家、劇作家、評論家。曾就讀於劍橋大學，1922年到倫敦，從事文學創作。他的作品被人們廣為傳閱的有小說《好夥伴》《天使街》，劇本《危險的角落》《我曾到過那裏》等。其散文寫作思想純真細膩，文筆婉轉流暢，語言生動活潑，讓人在平實的生活中感受人生的樂趣。
Ace in the Hole
Understand these new words before you read this article.
1. witty ['witi] adj. 詼諧的
2. tropic ['tr?pik] n. 熱帶
3. shattering ['??t?ri?] adj. 令人震驚的
4. flatten ['fl?tn] v. 使……平坦
Mr. Robert Lynd once remarked of Jane Austen’s characters: hey are people in whose lives a slight fall of snow is an event. ven at the risk of appearing to this witty and genial critic as another Mr. Woodhouse, I must insist that last night’s fall of snow here was an event. I was nearly as excited about it this morning as the children, whom I found all peering through the nursery window at the magic outside and chattering as excitedly as if Christmas had suddenly come round again. The fact is, however, that the snow was as strange and enchanting to me as it was to them. It is the first fall we have had here this winter, and last year I was out of the country, broiling in the tropics, during the snowy season, so that it really does seem an age since I saw the ground so fantastically carpeted. It was while I was away last year that I met the three young girls from British Guiana who had just returned from their first visit to England. The two things that had impressed them most were the endless crowds of people in the London street, all strangers (they emphasized this, for they had spent all their lives in a little town where everybody knows everybody), and the snow-covered landscape they awoke to, one morning when they were staying somewhere in Somerset. They were so thrilled and delighted that they flung away any pretence of being demure young ladies and rushed out of the house to run to and fro across the glittering white expanses, happily scattering footmarks on the untrodden surface, just as the children did in the garden this morning.