西南联大英文课：原版精读手册

《西南联大英文课》是西南联大时期（1937—1946）大一学生的英文课本，“大一英文”这门课是面向全校一年级学生开设的必修课程，所以这本书是联大八年办学中所有学生都学习过的。原书为纯英文，中译出版社于2017年推出英汉双语读本，深受欢迎。本次出版，按照文章主题分为8个分册，邀请8位外语名师联合导读，并附赠陈福田编写的原版精读手册，设计为口袋本，方便读者阅读和自学。 值得一阅！

很好，用两个月时间断断续续的看完，有的似懂非懂，有的囫囵吞枣，有的认真仔细。这里面有散文，有传记，有哲学，有教育学，有文学。每篇文章都精彩，有的地方也是解惑，让思维比以前更加清楚了一些。很经典的教材，很多思想放到现在依旧是前沿。

被名称耽误的宝藏书 “课本”劝退不少读者 但这本书真的是掇菁撷华

《西南联大英文课》：静坐听雨，无问西东 西南联大，仅存八年，却彪炳于世界大学之林，可与牛津、剑桥、哈佛、耶鲁平分秋色。几多辉煌事，悠悠八十年！传奇的西南联大至今令人神往，虽不能至，心向往之。今天要推荐的，便是这本《西南联大英文课》——西南联大时期，所有学生大一时的英文必修课课本。 本书由西南联大时任外文系主任的陈福田编订，原先为全英文读本（原名为《大学一年级英文教本》），如今附上了名家名译，英汉对照，更方便读者学习。它汇集了中外名家精华，如赛珍珠、毛姆、林语堂、胡适、兰姆、梭罗、爱伦·坡等，篇篇甄选，发人内省，常读常新。 译界泰斗许渊冲也曾求学于西南联大，他在其回忆录《逝水年华》中写道： ”联大八年来为国家培养了成千上万的人才，没有一个人不读《大一英文》（即《西南联大英文课》），没有一个人完全不受英文读本影响，不受潜移默化作用的。“ 本书既适合当作闲时的消遣，也经得住细细揣摩和推敲；既能品味汉语的魅力，又能饱览英文的精妙，对翻译学习者来说无疑是难得的高品质材料。

2023年3月19日 星期日 祝福早安 天气晴朗 气温3℃ 《西南联大英文课》 Guide to the Essay 导读 林语堂（1895—1976），中国现代著名作家、学者、翻译家、语言学家。 林语堂出生于一个基督教家庭，父亲为教会牧师。林语堂曾描述他父亲是个“无可救药的乐天派”“不可思议的理想主义者”，他同情劳苦人民，敢于顶撞乡绅，喜欢替人排忧解难，很受乡人敬重。他十分重视对子女的教育，教子女们读古诗、古文，学作联句，更要他们学好英文，不顾家境的窘困坚持送子女入名牌学校读书。家庭对林语堂的童年产生了很大影响。 1912年林语堂入上海圣约翰大学读书，毕业后在清华大学任教。1919年秋赴美在哈佛大学文学系攻读，1922年获文学硕士学位。同年，转入德国莱比锡大学，专攻语言学。1923年获博士学位后回国，先后在北京大学、北京女子师范大学和厦门大学任教。1924年后，作为《语丝》主要撰稿人写了许多针砭时弊的战斗性杂文。1932年开始，陆续创办刊物《论语》《人间世》和《宇宙风》，积极推进小品文创作，主张“幽默”“性灵”，提倡“以自我为中心，以闲适为格调”，成为“论语派”代表人物、国内享誉盛名的幽默大师。1935年用英语写作的《吾国与吾民》（My Country and My People），使他在美国和英国声名鹊起，跻身中国及中国文明的最佳阐释者之列。1936年到美国定居，以著作为生，主要用英语写作，创作了长篇小说《京华烟云》（Moment in Peking, 1939）、《风声鹤唳》（Leaf in the Storm, 1940）、《唐人街》（Chinatown Family, 1948）、《朱门》（The Vermilion Gate,1953）以及小品集《生活的艺术》（The Importance of Living,1937）等，翻译了《东坡诗文选》《浮生六记》等。林语堂于1940年和1950年先后两度获得诺贝尔文学奖提名。1966年定居台湾，1967年受聘为香港中文大学研究教授，主持编撰《林语堂当代汉英词典》。1976年在香港逝世，享年80岁。 《生活的目的》是林语堂所著《吾国与吾民》最后一章《结语》的第一部分，该书由纽约的约翰·戴出版公司1935年出版。他在文中以坦率幽默的笔调、睿智通达的语言剖析了中国人的性格、心灵、理想、生活、政治、社会和艺术，并与西方人的性格、理想、生活等作了广泛深入的比较。林语堂对于自己民族的传统文化具有深刻的理解，对于西方文化也在日久天长的浸淫中知之甚多，他的写作充分体现了他自己所说的“两脚踏东西文化，一心评宇宙文章”。 在本文中，林语堂认为中国人能够同时生活在感官世界和精神世界之中，而不认为两者一定会有什么冲突，因为人类的精神是被用来美化生活，提炼生活的精华，或许还能帮助生活克服感官世界中不可避免的种种丑恶和痛苦，而不是用来逃避生活，或在来世找寻生活的意义。这样的生活态度使中国人坚信一些简单的智慧，比如尊敬老人、享受家庭生活的乐趣、接受生活、接受性别差异、接受悲哀，也使中国人注重一些寻常的美德：忍耐、勤劳、节俭、中庸与和平主义。他认为，一切知识的最终目标是人类的幸福，因此要把个体的快乐和幸福追求当成生活的目的。他在文中写道：“生活是如此动荡不安，因而当我们发现了真正令自己满意的东西，我们就会抓住不放，就像一位母亲在黑暗的暴风雨之夜里紧紧搂住怀中的婴孩。”他还倡导一种冷眼看世界的人生态度：“人生在很大程度上不过是一场闹剧，有时最好做个超然的旁观者，或许比一味参与要强得多。”在当时整个民族面临灾难和痛苦的时候，林语堂仍然强调闲适和有趣的人生境界，看似与时代氛围极不协调，但实质上是体现了他贴近人生本相的人生哲学，因为人类在任何困境中都应该快乐地生存和搏斗下去。 I n the general survey of Chinese art and Chinese life, the conviction must have been forced upon us that the Chinese are past masters in the art of living. There is a certain whole-hearted concentration on the material life, a certain zest in living, which is mellower, perhaps deeper, anyway just as intense as in the West. In China the spiritual values have not been separated from the material values, but rather help man in a keener enjoyment of life as it falls to our lot.This accounts for our joviality and our incorrigible humor. A heathen can have a heathenish devotion to the life of the present and envelop both spiritual and material values in one outlook, which it is difficult for a Christian to imagine. We live the life of the senses and the life of the spirit at the same moment, and see no necessary conflict. For the human spirit is used tobeautify life, to extract its essence, perhaps to help it overcome ugliness and pain inevitable in the world of our senses, but never to escape from it and find its meaning in a life hereafter. When Confucius said in reply to a question by a disciple on death, “Don’t know life—how know death?” he expressed there a somewhat bourgeois, unmetaphysical and practical attitude toward the problems of life and knowledge which has characterized our national life and thinking. This standpoint establishes for us a certain scale of values. In every aspect of knowledge and of living, the test of life holds. It accounts for our pleasures and our antipathies. The test of life was with us a racial thought, wordless and needing no definition or giving of reasons. It was that test of life which, instinctively I think, guided us to distrust civic civilization and uphold the rural ideal in art, life and letters, to dislike religion in our rational moments, to play with Buddhism but never quite accept its logical conclusions, and to hate mechanical ingenuity. It was that instinctive trust in life that gave us a robust common sense in looking at life's kaleidoscopic changes and the myriad vexatious problems of the intellect which we rudely ignored. It enabled us to see life steadily and see life whole, with no great distortions of values. It taught us some simple wisdom, like respect for old age and the joys of domestic life, acceptance of life, of sex, and of sorrow. It made us lay emphasis on certain common virtues, like endurance, industry, thrift, moderation, and pacificism. It prevented the development of freakish extreme theories and the enslaving of man by the products of his own intelligence. It gave us a sense of values, and taught us to accept the material as well as the spiritual goods of life. It taught us that, after all is said and done, human happiness is the end of all knowledge. And we arrange ourselves to make our lives happy on this planet, under whatever vicissitudes of fortune. We are an old nation. The eyes of an old people see in its past and in this changing modern life much that is superficial and much that is of true meaning to our lives. We are a little cynical about progress, and we are a little bit indolent, as are all old people. We do not want to race about in a field for a ball; we prefer to saunter along willow banks to listen to the bird's song and the children's laughter. Life is so precarious that when we know something truly satisfies us, we hold on to it tight, as a mother hugs her baby close to her breast in a dark, stormy night. We have really no desire for exploring the South Pole or scaling the Himalayas. When Westerners do that, we ask, “What do you do that for? Do you have to go to the South Pole to be happy?” We go to the movies and theaters, but in the heart of our hearts we feel that a real child's laughter gives us as much real joy and happiness as an imaginary child's laughter on the screen. We compare the two and stay at home. We do not believe that kissing one's own wife is necessarily insipid, and that other people's wives are necessarily more beautiful because they are other people's wives. We do not ache to reach the foot of the mountain when we are in the middle of the lake, and we do not ache to be at the top of the hill when we are at its foot. We drink what wine there is in the pot and enjoy what scenery there is before our eyes. So much of life is merely a farce. It is sometimes just as well to stand by and look at it and smile, perhaps better than to take part in it. Like a dreamer awakened, we see life, not with the romantic color of yesternight’s dream, but with a saner vision. We are more ready to give up the dubious, the glamorous and the unattainable, but at the same time to hold on to the few things that we know will give us happiness. We always go back to nature as an eternal source of beauty and of true and deep and lasting happiness. Deprived of progress and of national power, we yet throw open our windows and listen to cicadas or to falling autumn leaves and inhale the fragrance of chrysanthemums, and over the top there shines the autumn moon, and we are content. For we are now in the autumn of our national life. There comes a time in our lives, as nations and as individuals, when we are pervaded by the spirit of early autumn, in which green is mixed with gold and sadness is mixed with joy, and hope is mixed with reminiscence. There comes a time in our lives when the innocence of spring is a memory and the exuberance of summer a song whose echoes faintly remain in the air, when as we look out on life, the problem is not how to grow but how to live truly, not how to strive and labor but how to enjoy the precious moments we have, not how to squander our energy but how to conserve it in preparation for the coming winter. A sense of having arrived somewhere, of having settled and having found out what we want. A sense of having achieved something also, precious little compared with its past exuberance, but still something, like an autumn forest shorn of its summer glory but retaining such of it as will endure. I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colors richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colors,richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength,its orange speaking of golden content, and its purple of resignation and death. And the moon shines over it, and its brow seems white with reflection, but when the setting sun touches it with an evening glow, it can still laugh cheerily. An early mountain breeze brushes by and sends its shivering leaves dancing gaily to the ground, and you do not know whether the song of the falling leaves is the song of laughter or of parting tears. For it is the Song of the Spirit of Early Autumn, the spirit of calm and wisdom and maturity, which smiles at sorrow itself and praises the exhilarating, keen, cool air—the Spirit of Autumn so well expressed by Hsin Ch‘ichi: “In my young days, I had tasted only gladness, But loved to mount the top floor, But loved to mount the top floor, To write a song pretending sadness. “And now I’ve tasted Sorrow's flavors, bitter and sour, And can't find a word, And can't find a word, But merely say, ‘What a golden autumn hour!’” Translation 参考译文 在概述了中国的艺术与生活之后，我们不得不承认中国人的确是精通生活艺术的大师。他们全心全意地致力于物质生活，其热忱绝不下于西方，并且更为成熟，或许还更为深沉。在中国，精神的价值并未与物质的价值相分离，反而帮助人们更好地享受自己命定的生活。这就解释了为什么我们具有一种快活的性情和根深蒂固的幽默。一个无宗教信仰的人会对现世的世俗生活抱有一种粗野的热忱，并且融物质与精神两种价值于一身，这在基督徒是难以想象的。我们能够同时生活在感官世界和精神世界之中，而不认为两者一定会有什么冲突。因为人类的精神是被用来美化生活，提炼生活的精华，或许还能帮助生活克服感官世界中不可避免的种种丑恶和痛苦，而不是用来逃避生活，或在来世找寻生活的意义。孔子在回答一位弟子关于死亡的问题时说：“未知生，焉知死？”这句话表达了一种对于生命和知识问题的庸俗、具体而实用的态度，而正是这种态度造就了我们现在国民生活及思维的特征。 这一立场为我们树立了多层级的价值尺度。这种生活标准适用于知识和人生的方方面面，解释了我们喜好与憎恶某一事物的原因。这种生活标准已经融入我们的民族意识，不需要任何文字上的说明、界定或阐释。我认为也正是这种生活标准促使我们在艺术、人生和文学中本能地怀疑城市文明，崇尚田园理想；促使我们在理智的时刻厌恶宗教，涉猎佛学但从不完全接受其合乎逻辑的结论；促使我们憎恶机械发明。正是这种对于生活的本能信仰，赋予我们一种坚定的常识，面对生活的万千变化以及智慧的无数棘手问题，可以做到岿然不动。它使我们能够沉着地、完整地看待生活，并维系固有的价值观念。它也教会了我们一些简单的智慧，比如尊敬老人，享受家庭生活的乐趣，接受生活，接受性别差异，接受悲哀。它使我们注重这样几种寻常的美德：忍耐、勤劳、节俭、中庸与和平主义。它使我们不至于发展某些怪异极端的理论，不至于成为自己智慧产品的奴隶。它赋予我们一种价值观，教会我们同时接受生活给予我们的物质和精神财富。它告诉人们：归根结底，只有人类的幸福才是一切知识的最终目标。于是我们得以在命运的浮沉中调整自己，欣欣然生活在这个行星之上。 我们是一个古老的民族。在老人看来，我们民族的过去以及变化万端的现代生活，有不少是浅薄的，也有不少确实触及了生活的真谛。同任何一个老人一样，我们对进步有所怀疑，我们也有点懒散。我们不喜欢为一只球在球场上争逐，而喜欢漫步于柳堤之上，听听鸟儿的鸣唱和孩子的笑语。生活是如此动荡不安，因而当我们发现了真正令自己满意的东西，我们就会抓住不放，就像一位母亲在黑暗的暴风雨之夜里紧紧搂住怀中的婴孩。我们对探险南极或者攀登喜马拉雅山实在毫无兴趣，一旦西方人这样做，我们会问：“你做这件事的目的何在？你非得到南极去寻找幸福吗？”我们会光顾影院和剧场，然而内心深处却认为，相比银幕上的幻象，现实生活中儿童的嬉笑同样能给我们带来欢乐和幸福。如此一来，我们便情愿待在家里。我们不认为亲吻自己的老婆必定寡淡无味，而别人的妻子仅仅因为是别人的妻子就显得更加楚楚动人。我们在身处湖心之时并不渴望走到山脚下去，我们在山脚下时也并不企求登至山顶。我们信奉今朝有酒今朝醉，花开堪折直须折。 人生在很大程度上不过是一场闹剧，有时最好做个超然的旁观者，或许比一味参与要强得多。我们就像一个刚刚醒来的睡梦者一样，看待人生用的是一种清醒的眼光，而不是带着昨夜梦境的浪漫色彩。我们乐于放弃那些捉摸不定、令人向往却又难以达到的东西，同时紧紧抓住不多的几件我们清楚会给自己带来幸福的东西。我们常常喜欢回归自然，以之为美和真正的、深沉的、长久的幸福的永恒源泉。尽管丧失了进步与国力，我们还是能够打开窗子，聆听金蝉的鸣声，欣赏秋天的落叶，呼吸菊花的芬芳。秋月朗照之下，我们感到心满意足。 我们现在身处民族生活的秋天。在我们生命中的某一时刻，无论是民族还是个人，都为新秋精神所渗透：绿色错落着金色、悲伤交织着欢乐、希望混杂着怀旧。在这一时刻，春天的单纯已成记忆，夏日的繁茂已为空气中微弱回荡着的歌吟。我们看待人生，不是在筹谋怎样发展，而是去考虑如何真正地活着；不是怎样奋发劳作，而是如何珍惜当下的宝贵时光尽情享乐；不是如何挥霍自己的精力，而是养精蓄锐应对冬天的到来。我们感到自己已经到达某个地方，安顿下来，并找到了自己想要的东西。我们还感到已经获得了某种东西，这与过去的荣华相比尽管微不足道，却像是褪去了夏日繁茂的秋林一样，仍然有些余晖在继续放光。 我喜欢春天，可它过于稚嫩；我喜欢夏天，可它过于骄矜。因而我最喜欢秋天，喜欢它泛黄的树叶、成熟的格调和斑斓的色彩。它带着些许感伤，也带着死亡的预兆。秋天的金碧辉煌所展示的不是春天的单纯，也不是夏天的伟力，而是接近高迈之年的老成和睿智——明白人生有限因而知足，这种“生也有涯”的感知与丰富的人生经验变幻出和谐的秋色：绿色代表生命和力量，橘黄代表金玉的内容，紫色代表屈从与死亡。在月光照耀下，秋天陷入沉思，露出苍白的神情；而当夕阳的余晖抚摸她面容的时候，她仍然能够爽悦地欢笑。山间的晨风拂过，枝杈间片片颤动着的秋叶舞动着飘向大地，你真不知道这落叶的歌吟是欣喜的欢唱还是离别的泪歌，因为它是新秋精神的歌吟：镇定、智慧、成熟。这种歌吟用微笑面对悲伤，赞颂那种令人振奋、敏锐而冷静的神情——这种秋的精神在辛弃疾的笔下表现得最为恰切： 少年不识愁滋味，爱上层楼。爱上层楼，为赋新词强说愁。 而今识尽愁滋味，欲说还休。欲说还休，却道天凉好个秋。 佚　名　译 Guide to the Essay 导读 作者赛珍珠（Pearl S. Buck, 1892-1973）是著名的美国作家，人权和女权活动家。她的代表作包括：《东风·西风》（East Wind: West Wind, 1930）、《大地》（The Good Earth,1931）、《流亡者》（The Exile, 1936）等。 赛珍珠于1892年6月26日出生在美国弗吉尼亚州西部，出生四个月后即被身为传教士的双亲带到中国。她先后在镇江、宿州、南京、庐山等地生活和工作了近四十年，其中在镇江生活了十八年，在那里经历了她人生的早期岁月，因此她称镇江是她的“中国故乡”。1900年因中国北方发生义和团运动，赛珍珠首次回到美国故乡，1902年重返中国镇江。1917年5月13日，她与美国青年农学家卜凯（John Lossing Buck）结婚，婚后迁居安徽宿州。 1921年下半年，赛珍珠随卜凯来到南京，受聘于美国教会所办的金陵大学（1952年并入南京大学）。赛珍珠在金陵大学外语系任教，并先后在国立中央大学等校兼职教授教育学、英文等课。赛珍珠在其1935年出版的为母亲所写的传记《流亡者》中提及了自己的这段早年经历。是年，她与卜凯离婚，并嫁给约翰·戴出版公司的所有人理查德·沃尔什（Richard J. Walsh）。 她以赛珍珠为笔名创作的小说《大地》于1931年获普利策奖，被评为当年美国出版的最佳小说，也被认为是赛珍珠关于中国的小说中最出色的一部。1938年，她获得诺贝尔文学奖，诺贝尔颁奖委员会对她的评语是：“对中国农民生活进行了丰富与真实的史诗般描述，且在传记方面有杰出作品。” 赛珍珠于1934年离开中国，但她一辈子都在传播跨文化理解，加强中西之间的友好交流。1941年，她和丈夫一起创办“东西方联合会”（East and West Association），致力于亚洲与西方的文化理解与交流。1942年3月，她应美国之音、英国BBC电台之邀，用汉语广播向中国介绍美国人民如何理解支持中国人民的抗日战争。不久，她最后一次到中国，为支持中国人民的抗日战争收集创作素材，进行深入宣传。 1973年3月6日，赛珍珠逝世于美国佛蒙特州丹比城，骨灰安葬在宾夕法尼亚州费城郊区绿丘农庄，享年81岁。 《贫瘠的春天》选自赛珍珠的第一部短篇小说集《原配夫人和其他故事》（The First Wife and Other Stories，1933年约翰·戴出版公司出版），该小说集分为三部分：探讨老式传统的中国方式和习俗与新的西方影响之间冲突的“新与旧”，描写中国革命活动的“革命”，以及围绕1931年长江严重水灾而写的“洪水”。本文选自“洪水”部分。 洪水过后的冬天闹饥荒，农民老刘为了让一家人能活下来，吃掉了所有能吃的东西：在吃光所有粮食之后，他们吃掉了用来播种的种子，杀掉了耕地的水牛，甚至劈掉了犁来煮牛肉。尽管如此，他的老父老母和一双儿女还是未能保住性命，被活活饿死了。寒冬过后，春天终于来了，这是万物复苏的季节，这是播种的季节，但老刘却什么都没有了，甚至连一粒种子也不剩！在一个原本充满希望的春天，农民老刘的心里只有绝望，对他来说这是一个“贫瘠的春天”。 赛珍珠的文字里没有呐喊，没有评论，而是以洗练客观的文字陈述事实、描写细节，将中国农民遭遇洪水饥荒后的悲惨生活铺陈在读者面前，使读者对他们的凄苦无奈产生强烈的共鸣和深切的同情。 L iu, the farmer, sat at the door of his one-room house. It was a warm evening in late February, and in his thin body he felt the coming of spring. How he knew that the time had now come when sap should stir in trees and life begin to move in the soil he could not have told himself. In other years it would have been easy enough. He could have pointed to the willow trees about the house, and shown the swelling buds.But there were no more trees now. He had cut them off during the bitter winter when they were starving for food and he had sold them one by one. Or he might have pointed to the pink-tipped buds of his three peach trees and his six apricot trees that his father had planted in his day so that now, being at the height of their time, they bore a load of fruit every year. But these trees were also gone. Most of all, in any other year than this hemight have pointed to his wheat fields, where he planted wheat in the winter when the land was not needed for rice, and where, when spring was moving into summer, he planted the good rice, for rice was his chief crop. But the land told nothing, this year. There was no wheat on it, for the flood had covered it long after wheat should have been planted, and it lay there cracked and like clay but newly dried. Well, on such a day as this, if he had his buffalo and his plow as he had always had in other years, he would have gone out and plowed up that cracked soil. He ached to plow it up and make it look like a field again, yes, even though he had not so much as one seed to put in it. But he had no buffalo. If anyone had told him that he would eat his own water buffalo that plowed the good land for him, and year after year pulled the stone roller over the grain and threshed it at harvest he would have called that man idiot. Yet it was what he had done. He had eaten his own water buffalo, he and his wife and his parents and his four children, they had all eaten the buffalo together. But what else could they do on that dark winter's day when the last of their store of grain was gone, when the trees were cut and sold, when he had sold everything, even the little they had saved from the flood, and there was nothing left except the rafters of the house they had and the garments they wore? Was there sense in stripping the coat off one's back to feed one's belly? Besides, the beast was starving also, since the water had covered even the grass lands, and they had had to go far afield to gather even enough to cook its bones and flesh. On that day when he had seen the faces of his old parents set as though dead, on that day when he had heard the crying of his children and seen his little daughter dying, such a despair had seized him as made him like a man without his reason, so that he had gathered together his feeble strength and he had done what he said he never would; he had taken the kitchen knife and gone out and killed his own beast. When he did it, even in his despair, he groaned, for it was as though he killed his own brother. To him it was the last sacrifice. Yet it was not enough. No, they grew hungry again and there was nothing left to kill. Many of the villagers went south to other places, or they went down the river to beg in the great cities. But he, Liu the farmer, had never begged. Moreover, it seemed to him then that they must all die and the only comfort left was to die on their own land. His neighbor had come and begged him to set forth with them; yes, he had even said he would carry one of the old parents on his back so that Liu might carry the other, seeing that his own old father was already dead. But Liu had refused, and it was well, for in the next two days the old mother was dead, and if she had died on the way he could only have cast her by the roadside lest the others be delayed and more of them die. As it was he could put her safely into their own ground, although he had been so weak that it had taken him three days to dig a hole deep enough for her little old withered body. And then before he could get her buried he and his wife had quarreled over the poor few clothes on the old body. His wife was a hard woman and she would have buried the old mother naked, if he had let her, so as to have the clothes for the children. But he made her leave on the inner coat and trousers; although they were only rags after all, and when he saw the cold earth against his old mother's flesh—well, that was sorrow for a man, but it could not be helped. Three more he had buried somehow, his old father and his baby daughter and the little boy who had never been strong. That was what the winter's famine had taken from them. It would have taken them all except that in the great pools lying everywhere, which were left from the flood, there were shrimps, and these they had eaten raw and were still eating, although they were all sick with a dysentery that would not get well. In the last day or so his wife had crawled out and dug a few sprouting dandelions. But there was no fuel and so they also were eaten raw. But the bitterness was good after the tasteless flesh of the raw shrimps. Yes, spring was coming. He sat on heavily, looking out over his land. If he had his buffalo back, if he had his plow that they had burned for fuel, he could plow the land. But when he thought of this as he did many times every day, he felt helpless as a leaf tossed upon the flood. The buffalo was gone; gone also his plow and every implement of wood and bamboo, and what other had he? Sometimes in the winter he had felt grateful that at least the flood had not taken all the house as it had so many other houses. But now suddenly it came to him that he could be grateful for nothing, no, not even that he had his life left him and the life of his wife and the two older children. He felt tears come into his eyes slowly as they had not even come when he buried his old mother and saw the earth fall against her flesh, bared by the rags which had comforted him that day. But now he was comforted by nothing. He muttered to himself. “I have no seed to plant in the land. There the land lies! I could go and claw it up with my hands if I had the seed and the land would bear. I know my good land. But I have no seed and the land is empty. Yes, even though spring comes, we must still starve!” And he looked, hopeless, into the barren spring.

花了很长时间才把这本书啃下来，很难想象这本西南联大一年级英语教材编的如此精妙。每一篇文章都谌称精品，值得我们细细读，慢慢品，深深悟。不仅学习了语言表达，更重要的是领略了大师独特的风采，他们的思维方式和思想结晶放至今日仍有很多共鸣。这也是我能持续读下来的重要因素，而且也有一直想读下去的冲动。值得强烈推荐！

哔站“企鹅英语研习社”的精读讲解非常棒

发现宝藏！不过书难度不低！[发抖]

很好，老师教的东西，老师拿回来。

西南联大英文课本可以照见英文教学历史