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.
The first fall of snow is not only an event but it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up to find yourself in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment, then where is it to be found? The very stealth, the eerie quietness, of the thing makes it more magical. If all the snow fell at once in one shattering crash, awakening us in the middle of the night the event would be robbed of its wonder. But it flutters down, soundless, hour after hour while we are asleep. Outside the closed curtains of the bedroom a vast transformation scene is taking place, just as if a myriad elves and brownies were at work, and we turn and yawn and stretch and know nothing about it. And then, what an extraordinary change it is! It is as if the house you are in had been dropped down in another continent. Even the inside, which has not been touched, seems different, every room appearing smaller and cosier, just as if some power were trying to turn it into a woodcutter’s hut or a snug log-cabin. Outside, where the garden was yesterday, there is now a white and glistening level, and the village beyond is no longer your own familiar cluster of roofs but a village in an old German fairy-tale. You would not be surprised to learn that all the people there, the spectacled postmistress, the cobbler, the retired school master, and the rest, had suffered a change too and had become queer elvish beings, purveyors of invisible caps and magic shoes. You yourselves do not feel quite the same people you were yesterday. How could you when so much has been changed? There is a curious stir, a little shiver of excitement, troubling the house, not unlike the feeling there is abroad when a journey has to be made. The children, of course, are all excitement but even the adults hang about and talk to one another longer than usual before settling down to the day’s work. Nobody can resist the windows. It is like being on board a ship.
When I got up this morning the world was a chilled hollow of dead white and faint blues. The light that came through the windows was very queer, and it contrived to make the familiar business of splashing and shaving and brushing and dressing very queer too. Then the sun came out, and by the time I had sat down to breakfast. It was shining bravely and flushing the snow with delicate pinks. The dining room window had been transformed into a lovely Japanese print. The little plum-tree outside, with the faintly flushed snow lining its boughs and artfully disposed along its trunk, stood in full sunlight. An hour or two later everything was a cold glitter of white and blue. The world had completely changed again. The little Japanese prints had all vanished. I looked out of my study window, over the garden, the meadow, to the low hills beyond, and the ground was one long glare, the sky was steely, and all the trees so many black and sinister shapes. There was indeed something curiously sinister about the whole prospect. It was as if our kindly countryside, close to the very heart of England, had been turned into a cruel steppe. At any moment, it seemed, a body of horsemen might be seen breaking out from the black copse, so many instruments of tyranny might be heard and some distant patch of snow be reddened. It was that kind of landscape.
Now it has changed again. The glare has gone and no touch of the sinister remains. But the snow is falling heavily, in great soft flakes, so that you can hardly see across the shallow valley, and the roofs are thick and the trees all bending, and the weathercock of the village church, still to be seen through the grey loaded air, has become some creature out of Hans Andersen. From my study, which is part from the house and faces it, I can see the children flattening their noses against the nursery window, and there is running through my head a jangle of rhyme I used to repeat when I was a child and flattened my nose against the cold window watching the falling snow:
Snow, snow faster:
White alabaster!
Killing geese in Scotland,
Sending feathers here!
參考譯文
羅伯特·林德曾這樣評論簡·奧斯汀筆下的人物：“他們是這樣的人，在他們的生活中，能遇上一場小雪就算是一件大事。”盡管可能被這位詼諧而溫和的評論家看成是伍德豪斯式的人物，我仍然堅持認為，昨晚這裏下了一場雪的確是一件大事。清晨，看到這皚皚白雪，我和孩子們不禁興奮起來，我看到他們在幼兒室的窗戶前凝望著外麵奇妙的世界，七嘴八舌說個沒完，仿佛又要過聖誕節了。事實上，這場雪對我和孩子們來說都是驚奇、迷人的。這是這裏今年冬天的第一場雪，由於去年此時我身在國外，在落雪時節正經曆著熱帶的高溫，所以再次看到鋪著這潔白地毯的大地，有種久違了的感覺。去年在國外時，我遇上英屬圭亞那三個年輕的女孩子，她們剛結束對英國的初訪。她們印象最深的兩件事是：倫敦街頭熙熙攘攘的人群，全都是陌生的麵孔（她們強調這一點，是因為她們一直生活在小鎮，人們彼此都很熟悉）；另外一件事是在索默塞特某地，一天清晨醒來忽然見到了白雪皚皚的景象。她們欣喜若狂，一掃淑女的矜持，衝出屋子，來回奔跑在那片晶瑩潔白的雪地上，在無人踩過的雪毯上，留下了橫七豎八快樂的腳印，正像孩子們今天早晨在花園裏做的那樣。
這場初雪不僅是件大事，而且還是件有魔力的大事。你睡覺時處在一個世界裏，而醒來時，卻發現你在一個截然不同的世界裏。如果這都不讓人沉醉，那麽，到哪裏去找更醉人的東西呢？一切都悄然地在一種神秘的沉靜中完成，這更給這場初雪增添了玄妙的色彩。若所有的雪鋪天蓋地傾瀉下來，把我們從午夜的沉睡中驚醒，那麽，這就沒什麽值得歡呼雀躍的了。但它卻是趁我們熟睡時，分秒必爭，悄無聲息地飄落下來。臥室裏窗簾拉攏了，外麵卻發生著翻天覆地的變化，猶如無數的精靈仙童在悄悄地施展魔法，而我們隻是翻個身，打個嗬欠，伸一下懶腰，對此毫無知覺。然而，這變化是多麽巨大呀！我們住的房子仿佛掉進了另一片天地。即使在白雪鞭長莫及的室內，也好像不一樣了，每個房間都顯得小巧而溫馨，好像有某種力量的驅使讓它成為一個伐木工的棚屋，或一所溫暖舒適的圓木房。外麵，昨天的花園，現在卻是晶瑩皎潔的一片，遠處的村落猶如置於古老德國神話中的一個仙境，不再是你所熟識的一排排房屋了。所有住在那裏的人們：戴眼鏡的郵政局女局長、鞋匠、退休的小學校長以及其他人，如果你聽說他們都改弦更張，成了古怪精靈般的人物，能為你提供隱身帽和魔術鞋，你也不要感到不可思議。你也會覺得自己和昨天不太一樣。一切都在變化，你又怎會一成不變呢？屋裏縈繞著一種莫名其妙的激動，一種由興奮而產生的微弱的顫動，讓人心神不寧，這和人們將要作一次旅行時所常有的那種感覺沒什麽兩樣。孩子們當然無比興奮，就連大人們在準備開始一天的工作之前，攏在一起聊天的時間也比以往要長一些。任何人都會不由自主地到窗戶前去瞧瞧——這種情形就和人們在一艘遠行的遊輪上一樣。
今天早晨起床時，整個世界變成了淡藍潔白交相呼應的冰封天地。光線從窗戶射進來，迷迷離離，竟然使得洗臉、刷牙、刮胡子、穿衣服這些日常小事也顯得很離奇古怪。接著太陽出來了，到我坐下來吃早餐時，太陽的光彩已經是絢麗奪目，給雪地添上一抹柔和的淡粉色。餐廳的窗戶成了一幅可愛的日本版畫，屋外的小梅樹愉快地沐浴著日光，枝杈上鑲嵌的淡粉色的雪花巧妙地裝點著樹幹。過了一兩個小時，萬物都成了寒氣四溢、白藍交輝的發光體，世界再次煥然一新，那精巧的日本版畫已然消失。我從書房的窗戶望去，穿過花園，越過草地，看到那遠處的低丘，大地晶瑩皎潔，天空一片鉛灰，所有的樹木都陰森恐怖——確實有種非同尋常的危險蘊藏在這景象之中。它好像把我們這個與英國中心毗鄰的宜人鄉村變成了一個殘忍冷酷的荒原。在那幽暗的矮樹林中，似乎有一隊騎兵隨時都會從裏麵衝殺出來，隨時都會聽到刀劍無情的砍殺聲，也可能會看到遠方某一處雪地被鮮血染紅。
———這就是我看到的情景。
這時情況又在變化。光亮已經消逝，那恐怖的跡象也**然無存。雪下得正緊，大片大片柔軟的雪花揚揚灑灑，因而人們幾乎看不清對麵那淺淺的山穀，厚厚的積雪壓著屋頂，樹木也都彎下了腰，映著影影綽綽的光芒，鄉村教堂的風標依然清晰可見，然而它已變成安徒生筆下的某種動物了。我的書房獨立於整所房子，從這兒我可以看到幼兒室的孩子們把鼻尖緊緊地貼在玻璃窗上。突然，我的腦海裏響起一首兒歌，雖然音韻不協調，但在我孩提時，每當鼻尖緊貼著冰冷的玻璃凝視著飄舞的雪花，總唱起它：
雪花，雪花，飄得快，
潔白的雪花真可愛！
蘇格蘭宰了多少鵝，
片片鵝毛這邊飄落！
Seize Your Time
According to the article, match each of the following verbs with its meaning.
(1) enchanta. to make an event successful by tricking someone
(2) contriveb. to talk quickly and continuously
(3) chatterc. to draw special attention to something
(4) emphasized. to cause you to have feelings of great delight or pleasure
Practice for Better Learning
Do the following statements agree with the information in the reading text?
Write
TRUEif the statement agrees with the information
FALSEif the statement contradicts the information
______ (1) The three girls from Guiana have met many friends when they came to London.
______ (2) The first fall of snow has made a magical effort on the surroundings.
Now a Try
Think about the most impressive fall of snow you have ever seen, and
then try to share it with your friends.
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