使露丝吃惊的正是他这类独特的见解。它们对她不但新颖,跟她的信念抵触,而且总让她发现含有真理的种子,有可能推翻或改变她自己的信仰。她老是十四岁而不是二十四岁便会因之而改变信念,但是她已经二十四岁,由于天性和教养,她的性格保守,早已在她所出生和成长的角落里定了形。不错,他的奇谈怪论刚出现时曾叫她迷惑,但她认为那是由于他的奇特类型和奇特生活所致,立即把它忘掉了。尽管如此,他发出这些论调时所表现的力量,眼里所闪出的光#和面都表情的认真仍然叫她悸动心跳,吸引着她,尽管她并不赞成,她不可能猜到这个来自她的视野以外的人此刻正在怀着更广阔深沉的思想飞速前进。露丝的局限性是她的视野的局限性,而受到局限的心灵不通过别人是意识不到的。因此她感到自己的视野已经很广阔,他跟她看法矛盾之处只标志着他的局限性。她梦想着帮助地使他像她一样看问题,扩大他的眼界,直到跟她的看法一致。
“不过,我的故事还没有完,”她说,“父亲说他比他办公室组的任何跑街的工作得都好。巴特勒先生工作总是很努力,从不迟到,总是提前几分钟到办公室。而且还能挤出时间来。他把一切空闲时间都用于学习。学簿记,学打字,晚上为一个需要训练的法庭记者做听写练习,赚了钱学速记。他很快便被提升为职员,让自己变成了无价之宝。爸爸很欣赏他,认定他有远大的前程。他听从了我爸爸的建议,上了法律学院,成了律师,rolex submariner replica。他再回到办公室时爸爸就让他做了他的年青搭档。他是个了不起的人,多次拒绝做美国参议员,chanel。爸爸说只要他愿意,一旦出缺他就可能做最高法院的法官。这样的一生对我们是一种鼓舞。它说明一个意志坚强的人是可以摆脱环境的限制成长起来的。”
“他是个了不起的人,”马丁由衷地赞美道。
但是他似乎觉得这故事里有些限他对美和人生的感觉抵触的东西。他认为巴特勒先生那种积攒困苦的生活动机未必恰当。如若是为了爱一个女人,或是为了追求美,马丁能理解。上帝的疯狂的情人为了一个吻是什么都可以干的。但是为了一年三万元却不值得。他对巴特勒先生的事业不满意,总觉得其中有些东西不足为训。三万元一年固然好,但是因此得了消化不良,连像人一样快活一下也不会,这样的巨大收入全无价值可言。
他努力向露丝阐述了这种想法,露丝吓了一跳,认为还需要继续对他重新塑造。她的心灵是常见的那种编狭心灵。这种心灵使人相信自己的肤色、信条和政治是最好的,最正确的,而分居世界各他的其他的人则不如他们幸运。正是同样的偏狭心理使古代的犹太人因为自己未曾生为女人而感谢上帝;使现代的教士到天涯海角去做上帝的代有人;使露丝要求把这个从生活另一角落来的人物接她自己那特定的生活角落里的人的样子加以塑造。
Chapter 9
Back from sea Martin Eden came,replica rolex watches, homing for California with a lover's desire. His store of money exhausted, he had shipped before the mast on the treasure-hunting schooner; and the Solomon Islands, after eight months of failure to find treasure, had witnessed the breaking up of the expedition. The men had been paid off in Australia, and Martin had immediately shipped on a deep- water vessel for San Francisco. Not alone had those eight months earned him enough money to stay on land for many weeks, but they had enabled him to do a great deal of studying and reading,cheap foamposites.
His was the student's mind, and behind his ability to learn was the indomitability of his nature and his love for Ruth. The grammar he had taken along he went through again and again until his unjaded brain had mastered it. He noticed the bad grammar used by his shipmates, and made a point of mentally correcting and reconstructing their crudities of speech. To his great joy he discovered that his ear was becoming sensitive and that he was developing grammatical nerves. A double negative jarred him like a discord, and often, from lack of practice, it was from his own lips that the jar came. His tongue refused to learn new tricks in a day.
After he had been through the grammar repeatedly, he took up the dictionary and added twenty words a day to his vocabulary. He found that this was no light task, and at wheel or lookout he steadily went over and over his lengthening list of pronunciations and definitions, while he invariably memorized himself to sleep. "Never did anything," "if I were," and "those things," were phrases, with many variations, that he repeated under his breath in order to accustom his tongue to the language spoken by Ruth. "And" and "ing," with the "d" and "g" pronounced emphatically, he went over thousands of times; and to his surprise he noticed that he was beginning to speak cleaner and more correct English than the officers themselves and the gentleman-adventurers in the cabin who had financed the expedition.
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