关于圣诞的故事,用英文说

关于圣诞的故事,用英文说

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　　Some Short Christmas Stories
　　Some Short Christmas
　　Stories
　　by Charles Dickens
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　　Some Short Christmas Stories
　　A CHRISTMAS TREE
　　I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children
　　assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree. The tree was
　　planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above their
　　heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers; and
　　everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were rosy-
　　cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and there were real watches
　　(with movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of being wound up)
　　dangling from innumerable twigs; there were French-polished tables,
　　chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other articles
　　of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at Wolverhampton),
　　perched among the boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy
　　housekeeping; there were jolly, broad-faced little men, much more
　　agreeable in appearance than many real men--and no wonder, for their
　　heads took off, and showed them to be full of sugar-plums; there were
　　fiddles and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-
　　boxes, sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; there
　　were trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up gold and
　　jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all devices; there were guns,
　　swords, and banners; there were witches standing in enchanted rings of
　　pasteboard, to tell fortunes; there were teetotums, humming-tops, needle-
　　cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, bouquet-holders;
　　real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears,
　　and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short, as a pretty child, before me,
　　delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend, "There
　　was everything, and more." This motley collection of odd objects,
　　clustering on the tree like magic fruit, and flashing back the bright looks
　　directed towards it from every side--some of the diamond-eyes admiring it
　　were hardly on a level with the table, and a few were languishing in timid
　　wonder on the bosoms of pretty mothers, aunts, and nurses--made a lively
　　realisation of the fancies of childhood; and set me thinking how all the
　　trees that grow and all the things that come into existence on the earth,
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　　Some Short Christmas Stories
　　have their wild adornments at that well-remembered time.
　　Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house
　　awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not care
　　to resist, to my own childhood. I begin to consider, what do we all
　　remember best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree of our own young
　　Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life.
　　Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of its
　　growth by no encircling walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree
　　arises; and, looking up into the dreamy brightness of its top-- for I observe
　　in this tree the singular property that it appears to grow downward towards
　　the earth--I look into my youngest Christmas recollections!
　　All toys at first, I find. Up yonder, among the green holly and red
　　berries, is the Tumbler with his hands in his pockets, who wouldn't lie
　　down, but whenever he was put upon the floor, persisted in rolling his fat
　　body about, until he rolled himself still, and brought those lobster eyes of
　　his to bear upon me--when I affected to laugh very much, but in my heart
　　of hearts was extremely doubtful of him. Close beside him is that
　　infernal snuff-box, out of which there sprang a demoniacal Counsellor in a
　　black gown, with an obnoxious head of hair, and a red cloth mouth, wide
　　open, who was not to be endured on any terms, but could not be put away
　　either; for he used suddenly, in a highly magnified state, to fly out of
　　Mammoth Snuff-boxes in dreams, when least expected. Nor is the frog
　　with cobbler's wax on his tail, far off; for there was no knowing where he
　　wouldn't jump; and when he flew over the candle, and came upon one's
　　hand with that spotted back--red on a green ground--he was horrible.
　　The cardboard lady in a blue-silk skirt, who was stood up against the
　　candlestick to dance, and whom I see on the same branch, was milder, and
　　was beautiful; but I can't say as much for the larger cardboard man, who
　　used to be hung against the wall and pulled by a string; there was a sinister
　　expression in that nose of his; and when he got his legs round his neck
　　(which he very often did), he was ghastly, and not a creature to be alone
　　with.
　　When did that dreadful Mask first look at me? Who put it on, and
　　why was I so frightened that the sight of it is an era in my life? It is not a
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　　Some Short Christmas Stories
　　hideous visage in itself; it is even meant to be droll, why then were its
　　stolid features so intolerable? Surely not because it hid the wearer's face.
　　An apron would have done as much; and though I should have preferred
　　even the apron away, it would not have been absolutely insupportable, like
　　the mask. Was it the immovability of the mask? The doll's face was
　　immovable, but I was not afraid of HER. Perhaps that fixed and set
　　change coming over a real face, infused into my quickened heart some
　　remote suggestion and dread of the universal change that is to come on
　　every face, and make it still? Nothing reconciled me to it. No
　　drummers, from whom proceeded a melancholy chirping on the turning of
　　a handle; no regiment of soldiers, with a mute band, taken out of a box,
　　and fitted, one by one, upon a stiff and lazy little set of lazy-tongs; no old
　　woman, made of wires and a brown-paper composition, cutting up a pie
　　for two small children; could give me a permanent comfort, for a long
　　time. Nor was it any satisfaction to be shown the Mask, and see that it
　　was made of paper, or to have it locked up and be assured that no one
　　wore it. The mere recollection of that fixed face, the mere knowledge of
　　its existence anywhere, was sufficient to awake me in the night all
　　perspiration and horror, with, "O I know it's coming! O the mask!"
　　I never wondered what the dear old donkey with the panniers--there he
　　is! was made of, then! His hide was real to the touch, I recollect. And
　　the great black horse with the round red spots all over him--the horse that I
　　could even get upon--I never wondered what had brought him to that
　　strange condition, or thought that such a horse was not commonly seen at
　　Newmarket. The four horses of no colour, next to him, that went into the
　　waggon of cheeses, and could be taken out and stabled under the piano,
　　appear to have bits of fur-tippet for their tails, and other bits for their
　　manes, and to stand on pegs instead of legs, but it was not so when they
　　were brought home for a Christmas present. They were all right, then;
　　neither was their harness unceremoniously nailed into their chests, as
　　appears to be the case now. The tinkling works of the music- cart, I DID
　　find out, to be made of quill tooth-picks and wire; and I always thought
　　that little tumbler in his shirt sleeves, perpetually swarming up one side of
　　a wooden frame, and coming down, head foremost, on the other, rather a
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　　Some Short Christmas Stories
　　weak-minded person--though good-natured; but the Jacob's Ladder, next
　　him, made of little squares of red wood, that went flapping and clattering
　　over one another, each developing a different picture, and the whole
　　enlivened by small bells, was a mighty marvel and a great delight.
　　Ah! The Doll's house!--of which I was not proprietor, but where I
　　visited. I don't admire the Houses of Parliament half so much as that
　　stone-fronted mansion with real glass windows, and door-steps, and a real
　　balcony--greener than I ever see now, except at watering places; and even
　　they afford but a poor imitation. And though it DID open all at once, the
　　entire house-front (which was a blow, I admit, as cancelling the fiction of
　　a staircase), it was but to shut it up again, and I could believe. Even open,
　　there were three distinct rooms in it: a sitting-room and bed-room,
　　elegantly furnished, and best of all, a kitchen, with uncommonly soft fire-
　　irons, a plentiful assortment of diminutive utensils--oh, the warming-pan!-
　　-and a tin man-cook in profile, who was always going to fry two fish.
　　What Barmecide justice have I done to the noble feasts wherein the set of
　　wooden platters figured, each with its own peculiar delicacy, as a ham or
　　turkey, glued tight on to it, and garnished with something green, which I
　　recollect as moss! Could all the Temperance Societies of these later days,
　　united, give me such a tea-drinking as I have had through the means of
　　yonder little set of blue crockery, which really would hold liquid (it ran out
　　of the small wooden cask, I recollect, and tasted of matches), and which
　　made tea, nectar. And if the two legs of the ineffectual little sugar-tongs
　　did tumble over one another, and want purpose, like Punch's hands, what
　　does it matter? And if I did once shriek out, as a poisoned child, and
　　strike the fashionable company with consternation, by reason of having
　　drunk a little teaspoon, inadvertently dissolved in too hot tea, I was never
　　the worse for it, except by a powder!
　　Upon the next branches of the tree, lower down, hard by the green
　　roller and miniature gardening-tools, how thick the books begin to hang.
　　Thin books, in themselves, at first, but many of them, and with deliciously
　　smooth covers of bright red or green. What fat black letters to begin with!
　　"A was an archer, and shot at a frog." Of course he was. He was an
　　apple-pie also, and there he is! He was a good many things in his time,
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