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Lesson One
The
Delicate Art of the Forest
林中高招
Mark Twain
Text
1 Cooper's gift in the way of invention
was not a rich endowment; but
such as
it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with
the effects, and
indeed he did some
quite sweet things with it. In his little box of
stage-properties he kept six or eight
cunning devices, tricks, artifices for
his savages and woodsmen to deceive and
circumvent each other with,
and he was
never so happy as when he was working these
innocent things
and seeing them go.
Cooper
COOPER
Grammar
As it
was
= as it was not rich
=
though it was not rich
Vocabulary
delicate
Marked by
sensitivity of discrimination:
a
critic's delicate
perception.
invention
the act of
producing something new for the first time
endowment
/en`daumEnt/
n.
1.
The act of supplying with
income, or a
talent.
2.
Funds or property donated
to an institution, an individual, or a
group as a source of income.
3.
A natural gift, ability,
or quality.
stage-property
things, objects used on stages except scenery,
costumes
cunning
Marked by
or given to artful subtlety and deceptiveness
device
A plan or scheme,
especially a malign one.
artifice
skillful tricks
savage
Not civilized;
barbaric
circumvent
outwit;
to defeat or outwit by cleverness or stratagem; to
surround or encircle with enmity
moccasin
A soft leather
slipper traditionally worn by Native Americans
twig
Any small, leafless
branch of a woody plant
handy
Readily accessible
vessel
A craft, especially
one larger than a rowboat, designed to navigate
on water
steer
a.
To direct the course of.
b.
To maneuver (a person)
into a place or
course of action.
skipper
The master of a ship
undertow
The seaward pull of
receding waves after they break on a
shore.
sailorcraft
cannon
A large, mounted
weapon that fires heavy projectiles. Cannon
include guns, howitzers, and mortars.
promptly
immediately
daisy
Slang
One that is deemed
excellent or notable.
trail
A mark or trace left by something that has moved
or been dragged
by.
stump
To clear stumps from;
To bring to a halt; baffle
slush
Soft mud; slop; mire.
vacate
To cease to occupy or
hold; give up
译文
库伯的发明天份并不怎么样，
虽然如此，他却不厌其烦地运用它，而
且还自鸣得意。
他还真的
用它干了几件十分惬意的事。
在他的舞台道
具盒里，只有七八个
高招、
秘诀和妙计，能够让他的土人和林子中的
人相互蒙来蒙去
。
他最大的快事就是摆弄这些天真的把戏，
看
< br>（欣赏）
它们起作用。
Key words
Cooper's gift (invention/ endowment)
was not rich; but he liked to work it,
and did some quite sweet things with
it. His stage-properties (for his
savages and woodsmen to deceive and
circumvent each other with) are
only
six or eight cunning devices (tricks, artifices),
and he was happy to
work them and see
them go.
Text
A favorite one was to make a moccasined
person tread in the tracks of the
moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own
trail. Cooper wore out barrels
and
barrels of moccasins in working that trick.
译文
其
中一个他喜欢的，
就是让一个穿鹿皮鞋的人踩着另一个也穿鹿皮鞋
的敌人的脚印，
借以掩盖自己的行踪。
干这个让库伯不知磨烂
了多少
双鹿皮鞋（靴筒）。
Text
Another
stage-property that he pulled out of his box
pretty frequently was
his broken twig.
He prized his broken twig above all the rest of
his effects,
and worked it the hardest.
It is a restful chapter in any book of his when
somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and
alarm all the reds and whites for
two
hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person
is in peril, and
absolute silence is
worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on
a dry
twig.
译文
另一个他常常从他的盒子里拿
出来的道具就是他的断树枝。
他比什么
都喜欢干树枝，
所以不遗余力地使用它。
他的书要是有哪一章没有人
踩上干树枝，
惊动周围二百码内的印地安人和白人，
那就谢
天谢地了。
每回库伯笔下的人碰到危险，
而一分安静一分金的时
候，
他保准要踩
上一根干树枝。
Text
There may be a hundred handier-things
to step on, but that wouldn't
satisfy
Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a
dry twig; and if
he can't do it, go and
borrow one. In fact, the Leatherstocking Series
ought to have been called the Broken
Twig Series.
译文
尽管附近有上百种东西可以踩，
但那称不了库伯的心。
库伯要他最后
找一个干树枝。要是他找不到，就去借一个。照他这样，<
/p>
《皮袜子故
事集》干脆就叫它《断树枝丛书》好了。
The Leather Stocking
Tales
The Leatherstocking
Tales, a series of five popular novels by James
Fenimore Cooper, constitute an epic of
the American wilderness. Natty
Bumppo,
the central character, embodies the spirit of the
frontier in The
Deersayer (1841), where
he is an idealized youth, and in The Prairie
(1827), in which, as an old man, he is
transfigured and dies. The other
novels
in the series are The Last of the Mohicans (1826),
The Pathfinder
(1840), and The Pioneers
(1823).
Text
I am sorry there is not room to put in
a few dozen instances of the delicate
art of the forest, as practised by
Natty Bumppo and some of the other
Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may
venture two or three samples.
译文
很遗憾，我没有足够的篇幅，
写上几十个例子，看看奈地
·
班波和其
他库伯专家们是怎样运用他的森林中的高招。
大概我们可以试着斗胆
举它两三个例子。
Text
Cooper was
a sailor -- a naval officer; yet he gravely tells
us how a vessel,
driving toward a lee
shore in a gale, is steered for a particular spot
by her
skipper because he knows of an
undertow there which will hold her back
against the gale and save her. For just
pure woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or
whatever it is, isn't that neat?
译文
库
伯曾经航过海
—
当过海军军官。但是他却一本正经（煞有介事）
地
告诉我们，
一条被风刮向海岸就要撞礁的船，
被船长驶向一个有离岸
暗流的地点而得救。
因为暗流顶
着风，
把船冲了回来。
看看这森林术，
这行船术，或者叫别的什么术，怎么样？（千载难逢的机会，可就是
被库伯找到了，）真
巧吧（真是干净利索吧）？
Text
For several
years Cooper was daily in the society of
artillery, and he
ought to have noticed
that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it
either
buries itself or skips a hundred
feet or so; skips again a hundred feet or so
-- and so on, till finally it gets
tired and rolls.
译文
有好几年，
< br>库伯每天都呆在炮兵部队。
他当然注意到了一个炮弹落到
地上要么钻到地里，要么就会弹起来，跳出百把尺，再弹再跳，直到
跳不动了，就往前滚
。
Text
Now in one
place he loses some
in the edge of a
wood near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to
give
Bumppo a chance to show off the
delicate art of the forest before the
Reader. These mislaid people are
hunting for a fort. They hear a
cannon-
blast, and a cannon-ball presently comes rolling
into the wood
and stops at their feet.
To the females this suggests nothing. The case is
very different with the admirable
Bumppo. I wish I may never know
peace
again if he doesn't strike out promptly and follow
the track of that
cannon-ball across
the plain through the dense fog and find the fort.
Isn't
it a daisy?
译文
现在有个地方，他的几个女性
（他总是这样称呼女的）在一个雾夜在
平原附近的树林边上迷了路。
他的目的就是给班波一个机会来给读者
显示一下他的森林中的本事。
这些迷了路的人正在寻找一个城堡。
她
们听到一声炮响
，
接着一发炮弹就滚进树林，
停在她们脚下。
< br>对女性，
这毫无价值。但对可敬的班波则完全不同了。我敢发誓，要是班波不
立刻行动，
跟着
弹痕，
穿过
浓雾，
跨过
平原，找到要塞，
就让我一生
不得安宁。怎么样？够巧的了吧？
Text
If Cooper had any real knowledge of
Nature's ways of doing things, he
had a
most delicate art in concealing the fact. For
instance: one of his
acute Indian
experts, Chinachgook (pronounced Chicago, I
think), has
lost the trail of a person
he is hopelessly lost. Neither you nor I could
never have guessed out the way to find
it. It was very different with
Chicago.
Chicago was not stumped for long. He turned a
running stream
out of its course, and
there, in the slush in its old bed, were that
person's
moccasin-tracks. The current
did not wash them away, as it would have
done in all other like cases -- no,
even the eternal laws of Nature have to
vacate when Cooper wants to put up a
delicate job of woodcraft on the
reader.
译文
如果库伯不是对自然规律一无
所知，他就是故意隐瞒事实。比方说，
他的精明的印地安专家之一，
名叫
芝稼哥
（我想，
该读作芝加哥
）
的，
跟踪一个人，在穿过树林的时候，脚印就找不到了。很明
显，脚印是
再也没法找到了。无论你还是我，都猜不出，怎么会找到它。对芝加
哥可完全不同。他没迟疑多久。他改变了一条小溪的流向，在原来泥
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