北外03-05笔译题

北外01-05笔译方向题：

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/articlelist_1249602171_10_1.html

北外03笔译P49

1. A language in Transition

As the world is in transition, so the English language is itself taking new forms. This, of course, has always been true: English has changed substantially in the 1500 years or so of its use, reflecting patterns of contact with other languages and the changing communication needs of people. But in many parts of the world, as English is taken into the fabric of social life, it acquires a momentum and vitality of its own, developing in ways which reflect local culture and languages, while diverging increasingly from the kind of English spoken in Britain or North America.

English is also used for more purposes than ever before. Everywhere it is at the leading edge of technological and scientific development, new thinking in economics and management, new literatures and entertainment genres. These give rise to new vocabularies, grammatical forms and ways of speaking and writing. Nowhere is the effect of this expansion of English into new domains seen more clearly than in communication on the Internet and the development of ‘net English’.

But the language is, in another way, at a critical moment in its global career: within a decade or so, the number of people who speak English as a second language will exceed the number of native speakers. The implications of this are likely to be far reaching: the center of authority regarding the language will shift

from native speakers as they become minority stakeholders in the global resource. Their literature and television may no longer provide the focal point of a global English language culture; their teachers no longer form the unchallenged authoritative models for learners.

英语在转变

世界在变化，英语也在不断出现新形式。当然，历来如此。在一千五百年左右的历史中，英语变化很大。这反应了英语与其他语言相互作用的方式，也反应了人们不断变化的交流需要。但在世界许多地区，英语用于社会生活，获取特有的动力与活力，并受当地文化和语言影响，不断发展，从而与英式、美式英语差别越来越大。

英语也正在用于更多领域。世界各地，无论科技新发展，经管新理念，文学新流派，抑或娱乐新形式，都在使用英语。这就产生了新词汇、新语法结构、新口笔头表达方式。英语进入新领域，影响颇深，网上交流及“网络英语”的诞生最能体现这点。

然而，换个角度来看，英语在全球扮演的角色正处于紧要关头：约十年后，把英语作为第二外语的人数，将会超过以之为母语的人数。这可能会产生深远的影响：全球范围内，以英语为母语的人将成为少数，他们也就不再是英语权威；或许，他们的文学作品和电视节目，将不再是全球英语文化的焦点；对学生而言，教师的绝对权威也将不复存在。

2. Shadow Lake

The color-beauty about Shadow Lake during the Indian summer is much richer than one could hope to find in so young and so glacial a wilderness. Almost every leaf is tinted then, and the goldenrods are in bloom; but most of the color is given by the ripe grasses, willows, and aspens. At the foot of the lake you stand in a trembling aspen grove, every leaf painted like a butterfly, and away to right and left round the shores sweeps a curving ribbon of meadow, red and brown dotted

with pale yellow, shading off here and there into hazy purple. The walls, too, are dashed with bits of bright color that gleam out on the neutral granite grey. But neither the walls, nor the margin itself, flashing with spangles, can long hold your attention; for at the head of the lake there is a gorgeous mass of orange-yellow, belonging to the main aspen belt of the basin, which seems the very fountain whence all the color below it had flowed, and here your eye is filled and fixed. This glorious mass is about thirty feet high, and extends across the basin nearly from wall to wall. Rich bosses of willow flame in front of it, and from the base of these the brown meadow comes forward to the water’s edge, the whole being relieved against the unyielding green of the coniferae, while thick sun-gold is poured over all.

During these blessed color-days no cloud darkens the sky, the winds are gentle, and the landscape rests, hushed everywhere, and indescribably impressive. A few ducks are usually seen sailing on the lake, apparently more for pleasure than anything else, and the ouzels at the head of the rapids sing always; while robins, grosbeaks, and the Douglas squirrels are busy in the groves, making delightful company, and intensifying the feeling of grateful sequestration without ruffling the deep, hushed calm and peace.

影湖

晚秋时节，阳光明媚，影湖四周的色彩煞是美丽。此处虽为初成的冰冷荒野，色彩却如此丰富，实在超乎想象。片片树叶，如染洗过一般；朵朵秋麒麟草，争相开放。色彩最丰，非秋草、杨柳莫属。影湖南端是一片杨树林，树叶微微颤动，似化作蝴蝶，翩翩起舞。远处，围着湖水两岸卧了一片草地，蜿蜒如丝带，红棕间点了几处浅黄，斑驳间铺了一层淡紫。阳光撞在墙上，撞出了一块亮灰色。可这些墙面，闪动的湖边草地，都留不住你的

目光。影湖北面有一大片绚丽的橙黄，这是洼地上杨树林带的颜色，如一口泉眼，喷出色彩一片。在这里，你将大饱眼福，而且只能呆呆地看着。这一片美丽的杨树林高约三十尺，跨过了整个洼地，几乎把两边的墙连在了一起。前面满是垂柳，枝叶如火焰摇曳。接着便是卧在湖边的褐色草地，周围是笔直墨绿的松柏。金色阳光撒满大地 。

这几日，天空无云，秋风轻抚，大地安睡，四下寂静，这景象十分迷人，无以言表。一群鸭子浮在水面，很明显只为嬉戏。几只黑鸫鸟一直在溪头鸣唱；知更鸟、松雀和松鼠愉快相伴、穿梭林间，更加感受到与世隔绝的快乐，却未扰乱这深沉的宁静与安详。

版本二：

Shadow Lake

The colour-beauty about Shadow Lake during the Indian summer is much richer than one could find in so young and so glacial a wilderness. Almost every leaf is tinted then, and the goldenrods are in bloom; but most of the colour is given by the ripe glasses, willows and aspens. At the foot of the colour you stand in a trembling aspen grove, every leaf painted like a butterfly, and away to right and left around the shores sweeps a curving ribbon of meadow, red and brown dotted with pale yellow, shading here and there into haze purple. The walls, too, are dashed with bits of bright colour that gleam out on the neutral granite grey. But neither the walls, nor the margin meadow, nor yet the gay, fluttering grove in which you stand, nor the lake itself, flashing with spangles, can long hold your attention; for at the head of the lake there is a gorgeous mass of orange-yellow, belonging to the main aspen belt of the basin, which seems the very fountain whence all the colour below it had flowed, and here your eye is filled and fixed. This glorious mass is about thirty feet high, and extends the basin nearly from wall

to wall. Rich bosses of willow flame in front of it, and from the base of these the brown meadow comes forward to the water’s edge, the whole being relieved against the unyielding green of the coniferae, while thick sun-gold is poured over all.

During these blessed colour-days no cloud darkens the sky, the winds are gentle, and the landscape rests, hushed everywhere, and indescribably impressive. A few ducks are usually seen sailing on the lake, apparently more for pleasure than anything else, and the ouzels at the head of the rapids sing always; while robins, grosbeaks, and the Douglas squirrels are busy in the groves, making delightful company, and intensifying the feeling the grateful sequestration without ruffling the deep, hushed calm and peace.

影湖

小阳春时节，影湖的色彩之美年轻而傲然，充满野性，远远超出人们的想象。那时的影湖层林尽染，黄花遍地，但最富于色彩的，却是转黄了的草叶，柳树与白杨。立在湖边，身处哗哗作响的白杨林中，只见片片叶子如蝴蝶般斑驳。草地围拥堤岸左右，恰似彩带环绕，红棕之间点缀着苍黄，四处渐次化为暗紫。堤岸也添了点点鲜活的色彩，在无奇的花岗岩灰色底子上闪耀着。但能长久吸引你注意的，却不是这堤，不是这缘岸的草地，不是你立于其间、色彩缤纷落叶翻飞的树林，也不是波光鳞动的湖面，而是缘湖而上尽头处那大片大片绚烂的桔红，充盈而锁定着你的目光。那是盆地里白杨林的一支，却仿佛是色彩的总源，所有之下的颜色都自那里涌出。这一片绚烂的桔红自下而上约有三十英尺，漫遍整个山谷，前部则是灼灼的柳焰，棕色的草地旁，草尽水现。背倚傲立的青松，身披熔金的日光，这一切显得更加醒目。

天气好的日子，影湖云淡风清，景致闲适宜人。湖面几只鸭子游来荡去，乐在其中。急流源头处，乌栋鸣声时闻；而知更鸟，蜡嘴鸟，道格拉斯松鼠穿梭林间，嬉戏相伴，不但没有扰乱周围的深邃静谧，反添了几分世外桃源的味道。

北外04笔译

An Insidious Narcotic

By Marie Winn

Because television is so wonderfully available a child amuser and a child defuser, capable of rendering a volatile three-year-old harmless at the flick of a switch, parents grow to depend upon it in the course of their daily lives. And as they continue to utilize television day after day, its importance in their children’s lives increases. From a simple source of entertainment provided by parents when they need a break from childcare, television gradually changes into a powerful and disruptive presence in family life, and despite their considerable guilt at not being able to control their children’s viewing, parents do not take steps to extricate themselves from television’s domination. They can no longer cope without it

In 1948 Jack Gould, the first television critic of The New York Times, described the impact of the then new medium on American families: “Children’s hours on television admittedly are an insidious narcotic for the parent. With the tots fanned out on the floor in front of the receiver, a strange if wonderful quiet seems at hand…”

On first glance it may appear that Gould’s pen had slipped. Surely it was the strangely quiet children who were narcotized by the television set, not the parents.

But indeed he had penetrated to the heart of the problem before the problem had fully materialized, before anyone dreamed that children would one day spend more of their waking hours watching television than at any other single activity. It is, in fact, the parents for whom television is an irresistible narcotic, not through their own viewing (although frequently this, too, is the case) but at a remove, through their children, fanned out in front of the receiver, strangely quiet. Surely there can be no more insidious a drug than one that you must administer to others in order to achieve an effect for yourself.

隐性 玛丽·温

电视能取悦、抚慰孩子，并随时可用，开关一打，三岁顽童顿时安静。因此，日常生活中，父母越来越依赖电视。家长日复一日地使用电视，电视在孩子的生活中也变得愈发重要。起初，电视仅仅是娱乐手段，帮父母摆脱照看孩子之苦，不过，电视已逐渐变得必不可少，并扰乱了家庭生活。家长无法让孩子不看电视，从而深感内疚，自己却不设法摆脱电视控制，相反，他们已经离不开电视了。

1948年，对电视这一新兴媒体之于美国家庭的影响，《纽约时报》第一位电视评论家杰克·古尔德曾作如下评述：孩子长时间看电视，这一现象已成为家长的隐性，这无可否认。孩子一散坐在地上看电视，奇异而安静的美妙气氛立刻来临……

乍看，古尔德似乎犯了笔误。当然，电视麻醉的，是异常安静的孩子，而非父母。但是，古尔德却真地看清了问题的实质。之后，这个问题才凸显出来，人们才想到，有一天，孩子会把大部分时间花在看电视上。事实上，说电视是无法抗拒的，是对父母而言的。虽然父母也常常看电视，麻醉说的倒不是这点，而是说他们把麻醉转移给了孩子，让孩子散坐在地上看着电视，十分安静。要说最为隐性的，还是那为达目的，必须施及他人的。

2

April

By Josephine W. Johnson

The hillside is held up by clumps of flowers on hairy stems. The petals lavender and white and pink and purple and sometimes a rare, pale blue. The same spot of earth, riddled with moss, snail shells, ferns, oak leaves, produces this pale rainbow. They last very little longer than a rainbow and, returning in a day or two, one finds no flowers, only hard green pods and a crop of odd-cut leaves.

These spring pools of flowers, rising year after year in the same place, are a recurring joy that never fails. It is one of the joys of living for years in the same place. This is not limited to wild land, nor to large places, but few stay long enough even on one small spot, or care enough to plant the reoccurring seed and know this seasonal miracle.

In the north pasture, the title “pasture” by courtesy only now, a pool of mint rises each spring, a lavender pond filled with bees, great bumblebees, small yellow bees, and the brown furry bees like winged mice. It is filled with the humming of the bees and the spicy smell of the mint leaves (leaves rich, green, convoluted as seashells) and the pool widens into a wider pool of white pansy violets, like a foam at the far edges. The wild pansies are separate and move in the wind.

This is the view from the woodchuck’s den above the draw. His porch is well beaten down, paths lead to it under the raspberry hoops. Wrens sputter around on the ravine rocks and broken crockery from the old rabbit hutches. All this view is probably wasted on his stupid doggishness. Unless, like Pythagoras, he thinks of

the violet leaves as spinach. The morning sun warms his front porch, the mists over the cool stones withdraw. I think of him coming out and contemplating this fresh April world, the smell of broken mint, the violets moving in the morning breeze, the trilling sounds of wrens before the day has brought their spirits down. But in good truth he not emerging that early, and if it is a cold day, he is not emerging at all.

四月 约瑟芬·W·约翰逊

茸茸的茎上鲜花丛生，开满山坡，淡紫的，白色的，粉红的，紫红的，偶尔也有淡蓝的。加上苔藓、蜗牛壳、蕨草、橡叶，这里恰似一层淡淡的虹。虽比天上的稍持久些，可若是一两天后再来，便会发现鲜花已凋零，取而代之的，是绿色的硬豆荚和奇形怪状的叶子。

春天，这里就是一方花池，花朵年年开放，不断带来欢乐，永不消失。这是长住一地的乐趣，不限于野外，也不限于宽广之处。但是，几乎无人长住哪怕弹丸之地，或有兴趣栽种年年开花的种子，也就体会不到这年复一年的奇迹。

每年春天，北方牧场，这因文明而叫做“牧场”的地方，总生长着一“池”的薄荷草，这一池的紫色。也总有大黄蜂、小蜜蜂穿梭其中，还有浑身毛茸茸的褐色蜂，活脱脱带了翅膀的小老鼠，嗡嗡叫个不停。薄荷叶多而绿，弯曲似贝壳，散发着阵阵清凉。“池水”渐渐延伸，与紫罗兰的“湖”相接，边缘处泛起了一层“泡沫”。紫罗兰冲开了，随风摇摆。

旱獭的洞穴位于洼地之上，从那里可以看见下面的薄荷池和紫罗兰湖。洞口结实，向内一直通到了悬钩子树的根部。鹪鹩鸟在溪谷边的岩石上，或旧兔圈里的破瓦罐边叫不停。旱獭也许不看下面的美景，把时间浪费在装饰洞穴上。或者，像毕达哥拉斯那样，把紫罗

兰叶当作菠菜。初升的太阳照暖了洞口，冷冰冰的石头周围，雾气渐渐消散。我想旱獭出来了，来看看这清新的四月世界，薄荷叶散发阵阵清凉，紫罗兰随着早晨的微风摇摆。鹪鹩鸟昨天的声音仍在回转，令人浑身不舒服，不过值得庆幸的是，这么早它还不出来，若是天气清冷，就整天不见它的踪影了。

北外05笔译P53

Death in the Open Lewis Thomas (1913- )

Most of the dead animals you see on highways near the cities are dogs, a few cats. Out in the countryside, the forms and coloring of the dead are strange; these are the wild creatures. Seen from a car window they appear as fragments, evoking memories of woodchuck, badgers, skunks, voles, snakes, sometimes the mysterious wreckage of a deer.

It is always a queer shock, part a sudden upwelling of grief, part

unaccountable amazement. It is simply astounding to see an animal dead on a highway. The outrage is more than just the location; it is the impropriety of such visible death, anywhere. You do not expect to see dead animals in the open. It is the nature of animals to die alone, off somewhere, hidden. It is wrong to see them lying out on the highway; it is wrong to see them anywhere.

Everything in the world dies, but we only know about it as a kind of abstraction. If you stand in a meadow, at the edge of a hillside, and look around carefully, almost everything you can catch sight of is in the process of dying, and most things will be dead long before you are. If it were not for the constant renewal and replacement going on before your eyes, the whole place would turn

to stone and sand under your feet.

Animals seem to have an instinct for performing death alone, hidden. Even the largest, most conspicuous ones find ways to conceal themselves in time. If an elephant missteps and dies in an open place, the herd will not leave him there; the others will pick him up carry the body from place to place, finally putting it down in some inexplicably suitable location. When elephants encounter the skeleton of an elephant out in the open, they methodically take up each of the bones and distribute them, in a ponderous ceremony, over neighboring acres.

It is a natural marvel. All of the life of the earth dies, all of the time, in the same volume as the new life that dazzles us each morning, each spring. All we see of this is the odd stump, the fly struggling on the porch floor of the summer house in October, the fragment on the highway. I have lived all my life with an

embarrassment of squirrel in my backyard, they are all over the place, all year long, and I have never seen, anywhere, a dead squirrel.

路有遗骨

刘易斯·托马斯(1913- )

城边高速路旁的动物死尸多数是狗，也有些是猫。在乡村，动物尸体的形状和颜色就比较奇怪了，那些尸体都是野生动物。从车里往外看，就如同碎片一晃而过，让人觉得可能是旱獭、獾鼠、臭鼬、田鼠，或是蛇，有时又让人觉得是只罹难的鹿。

每次都让人不禁一颤，悲伤之感突然涌上心头，让人一阵莫名地诧异。在高速路上看到一具动物的尸体不过是感到惊诧而已。让我感到悲伤的不仅是这些动物死在哪里，而是

异常地曝尸遍地，这很是少见的。动物天性本是寻个隐蔽的地方，独自死去。它们的尸体躺在高速路旁，到处都是，这就很不正常。

世间万物都有终结和死亡，只不过人们对“死”只有抽象的概念。站在一片草地上，山坡边，环望四周，几乎所看到一切的都处在由生到死的过程之中，并且其中的多数就在眼前结束了这个过程。若此过程不是持续不断、新旧更替，那眼前之景恐怕只剩下沙石了。

动物天性就是寻个隐蔽的地方，独自死去。即便是最大的、最不易隐藏的动物也会及时找个地方藏起来。若是哪只大象不小心死在了野外，象群也不会就这样离它而去，而是将这尸体搬到一处又一处，直到找到一个隐蔽而又合适的地方为止。若象群在野外发现某只大象的残骨，那么每只大象都会拾起骨头，缓缓地在一旁举行“葬礼”。

自然是奇妙的。无时无刻，总有生命在结束；而每个清晨、每年春天又有同样多的生命开始。可我们只看到了零零散散的树桩，看到了十月里的苍蝇在避暑别墅挣扎，看到了高速路旁的尸体。那么多年了，我后院的松鼠一年到头总是叽叽地闹个不停，而我却从来没有见过一具松鼠的尸体。

2. Thoughts in Westminster Abbey

Joseph Addison (1672-1791)

When I am in a serious humor, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the churchyard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met

with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another: the whole history of his life being comprehended in those registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons; who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died. They put me in mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems, who have sounding names given them, for no other reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head. The life of these men is finely described in holy writ by ‘the path of an arrow’, which is immediately closed up and lost.

Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty strength, and youth, with old age, weakness and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.

西敏教堂随想

约瑟夫·艾迪生(1672-1791)

心情不悦时，我常独自一人在西敏教堂散步。这里充满沮丧。庄严的建筑突显了这里

的用途，加上这里的生活条件，只让我觉得很是忧郁，或者说产生许多和这场景相符的念头。昨天，我整个下午漫步于教堂、回廊，来到了墓地。我看了几个墓地里的墓碑和上面的碑文，很感兴趣。大多数碑文上，除了记载着死者的生日死期，其他什么都没写。死者的一生就这么写在了墓碑上，且不论这墓碑是铜制的还是大理石的，墓碑本身就是对死者的一种讽刺。死者唯一在上面拥有的就是他的生日死期。这倒让我想起了英雄诗章里描述的在战场上厮杀的人。这些人获得响亮的称号，只是因为他们可能会死于他人之手；后人纪念他们也只是因为他们的脑袋被砸开了花。《圣经》里的“箭之路”对这些人的一生做了最终诠释，这条路转瞬即逝，并消失得无影无踪。

从我来到这教堂，便用挖掘坟墓来愉悦自己。我看着一铲一铲的土往外抛，骨头或头盖骨的碎片夹杂着泥土，不时也夹带着尸体的某一部分，于是我想：有多少数不清的人也不明缘由地，就躺在了这古老教堂的地下；男人女人、朋友敌人、牧师军人、和尚教士，他们是如何一个挨着一个地卧在了同一片土地下；美人壮士、青年老人、弱者残疾，又是如何不分彼此，睡在了同一堆杂乱的泥土下？

北外06笔译

Passage One

It is curious to consider the diversity of men’s talents, and the causes of their failure or success．which are not less numerous and contradictory than their pursuits in life．Fortune does not always smile on merit：the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong．And even where the candidate for wealth or honors succeeds, it is as often, perhaps, from the qualifications which he wants as from those which he possesses；or the eminence which he is lucky enough to attain, is

owing to some faculty or acquirement, which neither he nor anybody else suspected．There is a balance of power in the human mind, by which defects frequently assist in furthering our views, as superfluous excellences are converted into the nature of impediments；and again, there is a continual substitution of one talent for another, through which we mistake the appearance for the

reality…So a Minister of State wields the House of Commons by his manner alone；while his friends and his foes are equally at a loss to account for his

influence, looking for it in vain in the matter or style of his speeches．So the air with which a celebrated barrister waved a white cambric handkerchief passes for eloquence．So the buffoon is taken for a wit．The way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it；the surest hindrance to it is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds．or too high an opinion of the discernment of the public．He who is determined not to be satisfied with anything short of perfection, will never do anything at all, either to please himself or others．The question is not what we ought to do．but what we can do for the best．An excess of modesty is in fact an excess of pride, and more hurtful to the individual, and less advantageous to society, than the grossest and most unblushing vanity．

From On the Qualifications Necessary for Success by William Hazlitt

Passage Two

One of the most disgraceful features of life in the country, Father often declared, was the general inefficiency and slackness of small village

tradesmen．He said he had originally supposed that such men were interested in business, and that that was why they had opened their shops and sunk capital in them, but no, they never used them for anything but gossip and sleep．They took no interest in civilized ways．Hadn’t heard of them, probably．He said that of course if he were camping out on the veldt or the tundra, he would expect few conveniences in the neighborhood and would do his best to forego them, but why should he be confronted with the wilds twenty miles away from New York?

Usually, when Father talked this way, he was thinking of ice．He strongly objected to spending even one day of his life without a glass of cold water beside his plate at every meal．There was never any difficulty about this in my home in the city．A great silver ice, water pitcher stood on the sideboard all day, and when Father was home its outer surface was frosted with cold．When he had gone to the office, the ice was allowed to melt sometimes, and the water got warmish, but never in the evening, or on Sundays, when Father might want some．He said he liked water, he told us it was one of Nature’s best gifts, but he said that like all her gifts it was unfit for human consumption unless served in a suitable manner．And the only right way to serve water was icy cold．

It was still more important that each kind of wine should be served at whatever the right temperature was for it．And kept at it, too．No civilized man would take dinner without wine, Father said, and no man who knew the first thing about it would keep his wine in hot cellars．Mother thought this was a mere whim of Father’s．She said he was fussy．How about people who lived in apartments, she asked him, who didn’t have cellars? Father replied that civilized

persons didn’t live in apartments．

From Father Wakes Up the Village by Clarence Day

北外07笔译

A Word for Autumn

By A. A. Milne

LAST night the waiter put the celery on with the cheese, and I knew that summer was indeed dead. Other signs of autumn there may be—the reddening leaf, the chill in the early-morning air, the misty evenings—but none of these comes home to me so truly. There may be cool mornings in July; in a year of drought the leaves may change before their time; it is only with the first celery that summer is over.

I knew all along that it would not last. Even in April I was saying that winter would soon be here. Yet somehow it had begun to seem possible lately that a miracle might happen, that summer might drift on and on through the months—a final upheaval to crown a wonderful year. The celery settled that. Last night with the celery autumn came into its own.

There is a crispness about celery that is of the essence of October. It is as fresh and clean as a rainy day after a spell of heat. It crackles pleasantly in the mouth.

Moreover it is excellent, I am told, for the complexion. One is always hearing of things which are good for the complexion, but there is no doubt that celery stands high on the list. After the burns and freckles of summer one is in need of something. How good that celery should be there at one’s elbow.

A week ago—(“A little more cheese, waiter”)—a week ago I grieved for the dying summer. I wondered how I could possibly bear the waiting—the eight long months till May. In vain to comfort myself with the thought that I could get through more work in the winter undistracted by thoughts of cricket grounds and country houses. In vain, equally, to tell myself that I could stay in bed later in the mornings. Even the thought of after-breakfast pipes in front of the fire left me cold. But now, suddenly, I am reconciled to autumn. I see quite clearly that all good things must come to an end. The summer has been splendid, but it has lasted long enough. This morning I welcomed the chill in the air; this morning I viewed the falling leaves with cheerfulness; and this morning I said to myself, “Why, of course, I’ll have celery for lunch.” (“More bread, waiter.”)

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” said Keats, not actually picking out celery in so many words, but plainly including it in the general blessings of the autumn. Yet what an opportunity he missed by not concentrating on that precious root. Apples, grapes, nuts, and vegetable marrows he mentions specially—and how poor a selection! For apples and grapes are not typical of any month, so ubiquitous are they, vegetable marrows are vegetables pour rire and have no place in any serious consideration of the seasons, while as for nuts, have we not a national song which asserts distinctly, “Here we go gathering nuts in May”?

Season of mists and mellow celery, then let it be.

Yet, I can face the winter with calm. I suppose I had forgotten what it was really like. I had been thinking of the winter as a horrid wet, dreary time fit only for professional football. Now I can see other things—crisp and sparkling days, long pleasant evenings, cheery fires. Good work shall be done this winter. Life shall be lived well. The end of the summer is not the end of the world. Here’s to October—and, waiter, some more celery.