马可·波罗游记
The Travels of Marco Polo
马可·波罗 / Marco Polo
途经吴州的这三天行程中，我看到了许多城镇、宫殿和村庄，这些地方人口密集，繁荣昌盛。第三天，我们到达了宏伟壮丽的临安城，意即“皇城”。
临安城内有十个主要的广场，或称市集，沿街还有许多店铺。广场每边各有半英里长，正前方是主街道，各有40步宽，从城的一端笔直地延伸到另一端。市集上野味的品种和数量丰富充足，有鹌鹑、雉鸡、鹧鸪、松鸡、家禽、阉鸡，还有雄獐、牡鹿、扁角鹿和野兔，除此之外，还有不计其数的鸭和鹅。
市集上，各种各样的药草和水果一年四季都在出售，尤其是大个梨，每个足有10磅重，果肉呈白色，像晶莹剔透的糨糊，还散发出一种浓郁的香味。当然，也有正当时令的桃子，有黄有白，味美可口。每天，从15英里以外的海中捕捞的大量鱼品，从河道运到城内。湖中渔产也很丰富，这就给那些专以打鱼为生的渔夫提供了常年的就业机会。
主街道两边都是带有花园的大豪宅、大官邸，而近旁就是依靠各自手艺开店铺的工匠屋舍了。市民用的都是纸币。这里的男男女女肤色白皙，俊朗漂亮。临安城盛产丝绸，因而人们大多都穿着丝制衣裳。人们相亲相爱，关爱有加，街坊邻居，不论男女，俨然一家人。家庭礼法中，丈夫不会猜忌妻子，反而对其十分尊敬；要是哪个丈夫对妻子出言不逊，他肯定会声名狼藉。对来城经商的外地人，人们也会礼貌相待，真诚地邀请他们常到家中做客，热情款待他们，并会提供经商的最好建议和帮助。
临安城25英里外的东南方有一片大海，海附近有一个叫澉浦的城镇，那是一个优良的港口城，停泊着从印度驶来的所有货船。
Upon leaving Va-giu you pass in the course of three days’ journey many towns, castles, and villages, all of them well inhabited and opulent. At the end of three days you reach the noble and magnificent city of Kin-sai, a name that signifies “the celestial city.”
There are within the city ten principal squares or market-places, besides innumerable shops along the streets. Each side of these squares is half a mile in length, and in front of them is the main street, forty paces in width, and running in a direct line from one extremity of the city to the other. There is an abundant quantity of game of all kinds, such as roebucks, stags, fallow deer, hares, and rabbits, together with partridges, pheasants, francolins, quails, common fowls, capons, and such numbers of ducks and geese as can scarcely be expressed.
At all seasons there is in the markets a great variety of herbs and fruits, and especially pears of an extraordinary size, weighing ten pounds each, that are white in the inside, like paste, and have a very fragrant smell. There are peaches also, in their season, both of the yellow and the white kind, and of a delicious flavour. From the sea, which is fifteen miles distant, there is daily brought up the river, to the city, a vast quantity of fish; and in the lake also there is abundance, which gives employment at all times to persons whose sole occupation it is to catch them.
On each side of the principal street, there are houses and mansions of great size, with their gardens, and near to these, the dwellings of the artisans, who work in shops, at their several trades. The inhabitants of the city use paper money as currency. The men as well as the women have fair complexions, and are handsome. The greater part of them are always clothed in silk, in consequence of the vast quantity of that material produced in the territory of Kin-sai. They are friendly towards each other, and persons who inhabit the same street, both men and women, from the mere circumstance of neighborhoods, appear like one family. In their domestic manners they are free from jealousy or suspicion of their wives, to whom great respect is shown, and any man would be accounted infamous who should presume to use indecent expressions to a married woman. To strangers also, who visit their city in the way of commerce, they give proofs of cordiality, inviting them freely to their houses, showing them hospitable attention, and furnishing them with the best advice and assistance in their mercantile transactions.
At the distance of twenty-five miles from this city, in a direction to the northward of east, lies the sea, near to which is a town named Gan-pu, where there is an extremely fine port, frequented by all the ships that bring merchandise from India.
一棵树的启示
The Lesson of a Tree
沃尔特·惠特曼 / Walter Whitman
我不会选那棵最大或最独特的树来描绘。在我面前，有我最喜欢的一棵树，那是一棵美丽的黄杨树，它很直，可能有九十英尺高，最粗的地方直径达四英尺。它是如此强壮！如此富有生命力！如此挺立在风雨中！又是如此无言而善喻！它所启示的泰然自若和生存的本质，与人生浮华的表象形成了如此鲜明的对比。可以说，一棵树也是有情感的，富有生动的艺术性质，也是英勇无畏的。它是如此天真，不会伤害任何东西，它又是那么原始粗野；它无言地存在着，用自己的坚强、平和，宁静有力地斥责了风雨雷电以及人类——这个一碰到风吹草动就躲进房子里的没用的小东西。科学（或者更准确地说，是不彻底的科学）对有关树精、树仙和会说话的树等想象嗤之以鼻。然而，即使树木不会说话，它们也与大多数语言、文字、诗歌与训诫一样善喻，甚至比它们有过之而无不及。我敢断定，那些古老的有关树精的联想是非常真实的，甚至比我们大多数联想都更为深刻。（“把它砍下来”，骗人的游医这么说，然后留在你身边）请到树丛中或林地间坐下来，与无言的树木做伴，然后再把前面的那些话读一读、想一想。
人们从一棵树那里得到的启示——或者说大地、岩石以及动物赋予人们的最大道德教义，就是它们对于生存的内在本质的提示与观望者（或批评者）的推测和述说完全无关，与他的喜好与憎恶完全无关。一种疾患在我们每个人和我们大家的心间充斥着，渗透于我们的文学、教育以及彼此对待（甚至自我对待）的态度中，这便是对表面现象的喋喋不休，而对于人物、书籍、友谊、婚姻之合理的、逐渐增强的、经常存在的真实，亦即人类无形的本质和基础，不予过问或几乎不加过问。还有什么疾患比这更糟糕、更普遍吗？
I should not take either the biggest or the most picturesque tree to illustrate it. Here is one of my favorites now before me, a fine yellow poplar, quite straight, perhaps 90 feet high, and four feet thick at the butt. How strong, vital enduring! How dumbly eloquent! What suggestions of imperturbability and being, as against the human trait of mere seeming. Then the qualities, almost emotional, palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and harmless, yet so savage. It is, yet says nothing. How it rebukes by its tough and equable serenity as weathers, this gusty-temper’s little whiffet, man that runs indoors at a mite of rain or snow. Science (or rather half-way science) scoffs at reminiscence of dryad and hamadryad, and of trees speaking. But, if they don’t, they do as well as most speaking, writing, poetry, sermons or rather they do a great deal better. I should say indeed that those old dryad—reminiscences are quit as true as any, and profounder than most reminiscences we get. (“Cut this out,” as the quack mediciners say, and keep by you.) Go and sit in a grove or woods, with one or more of those voiceless companions, and read the fore going, and think.
One lesson from affiliating a tree—perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth, rock, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of what is, without the least regard to what the looker or (the critic) supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. What worse—what more general malady pervades each and all of us, our literature, education, attitude toward each other, (even toward ourselves,) than a morbid trouble about seems, and no trouble at all, or hardly any, about the sane, slow-growing perennial, real parts of character, books, friendship, marriage—humanity’ s invisible foundations and hold together.
一撮黏土
A Handful of Clay
亨利·凡·戴克 / Henry Van Dyke
很久以前，在一条河边有这样一撮黏土。说起来，它也不过是普普通通的黏土，粗糙笨重，不过它对自己的价值看得很高。它对自己在世界上可能占有的地位怀有奇特的想象，认为只要能得到机会，自己的价值一定会被人们发现。