章节正文
it he brought in all the Sevadras, even to the twice-removed; all
the Castros who were his wife's family, all the Saises, Romeros,
and Eschobars,--the relations of his relations-in-law. There you
have the beginning of a pretty considerable town. To these accrued
much of the Spanish California float swept out of the southwest by
eastern enterprise. They slacked away again when the price of
silver went down, and the ore dwindled in La Golondrina. All the
hot eddy of mining life swept away from that corner of the hills,
but there were always those too idle, too poor to move, or too
easily content with El Pueblo de Las Uvas.
Nobody comes nowadays to the town of the grape vines except,
as we say, "with the breath of crying," but of these enough. All
the low sills run over with small heads. Ah, ah! There is a kind
of pride in that if you did but know it, to have your baby every
year or so as the time sets, and keep a full breast. So great a
blessing as marriage is easily come by. It is told of Ruy Garcia
that when he went for his marriage license he lacked a dollar of
the clerk's fee, but borrowed it of the sheriff, who expected
reelection and exhibited thereby a commendable thrift. Of what
account is it to lack meal or meat when you may have it of
any neighbor? Besides, there is sometimes a point of honor in
these things. Jesus Romero, father of ten, had a job sacking ore
in the Marionette which he gave up of his own accord. "Eh, why?"
said Jesus, "for my fam'ly."
"It is so, senora," he said solemnly, "I go to the Marionette,
I work, I eat meat--pie--frijoles--good, ver' good. I come home
sad'day nigh' I see my fam'ly. I play lil' game poker with the
boys, have lil' drink wine, my money all gone. My fam'ly have no
money, nothing eat. All time I work at mine I eat, good, ver' good
grub. I think sorry for my fam'ly. No, no, senora, I no work no
more that Marionette, I stay with my fam'ly." The wonder of it is,
I think, that the family had the same point of view.
Every house in the town of the vines has its garden plot, corn
and brown beans and a row of peppers reddening in the sun; and in
damp borders of the irrigating ditches clumps of
yerbasanta, horehound, catnip, and spikenard, wholesome herbs and
curative, but if no peppers then nothing at all. You will have for
a holiday dinner, in Las Uvas, soup with meat balls and chile in
it, chicken with chile, rice with chile, fried beans with more
chile, enchilada, which is corn cake with the sauce of chile and
tomatoes, onion, grated cheese, and olives, and for a relish chile
tepines passed about in a dish, all of which is comfortable
and corrective to the stomach. You will have wine which
every man makes for himself, of good body and inimitable bouquet,
and sweets that are not nearly so nice as they look.
There are two occasions when you may count on that kind of a
meal; always on the Sixteenth of September, and on the two-yearly
visits of Father Shannon. It is absurd, of course, that El Pueblo
de Las Uvas should have an Irish priest, but Black Rock, Minton,
Jimville, and all that country round do not find it so. Father
Shannon visits them all, waits by the Red Butte to confess the
shepherds who go through with their flocks, carries blessing to
small and isolated mines, and so in the course of a year or so
works around to Las Uvas to bury and marry and christen. Then all
the little graves in the Campo Santo are brave with tapers,
the brown pine headboards blossom like Aaron's rod with paper roses
and bright cheap prints of Our Lady of Sorrows. Then the Senora
Sevadra, who thinks herself elect of heaven for that office,
gathers up the original sinners, the little Elijias, Lolas,
Manuelitas, Joses, and Felipes, by dint of adjurations and sweets
smuggled into small perspiring palms, to fit them for the
Sacrament.
I used to peek in at them, never so softly, in Dona Ina's
living-room; Raphael-eyed little imps, going sidewise on their
knees to rest them from the bare floor, candles lit on the mantel
to give a religious air, and a great sheaf of wild bloom
before the Holy Family. Come Sunday they set out the altar in the
schoolhouse, with the fine-drawn altar cloths, the beaten silver
candlesticks, and the wax images, chief glory of Las Uvas, brought
up mule-back from Old Mexico forty years ago. All in white the
communicants go up two and two in a hushed, sweet awe to take the
body of their Lord, and Tomaso, who is priest's boy, tries not to
look unduly puffed up by his office. After that you have dinner
and a bottle of wine that ripened on the sunny slope of Escondito.
All the week Father Shannon has shriven his people, who bring clean
conscience to the betterment of appetite, and the Father sets them
an example. Father Shannon is rather big about the middle to
accommodate the large laugh that lives in him, but a most shrewd
searcher of hearts. It is reported that one derives comfort from
his confessional, and I for my part believe it.
The celebration of the Sixteenth, though it comes every year,
takes as long to prepare for as Holy Communion. The senoritas have
each a new dress apiece, the senoras a new rebosa. The
young gentlemen have new silver trimmings to their sombreros,
unspeakable ties, silk handkerchiefs, and new leathers to their
spurs. At this time when the peppers glow in the gardens and the
young quail cry "cuidado," "have a care!" you can hear the
plump, plump of the metate from the alcoves of the vines where
comfortable old dames, whose experience gives them the touch of art,
are pounding out corn for tamales.
School-teachers from abroad have tried before now at Las Uvas
to have school begin on the first of September, but got nothing
else to stir in the heads of the little Castros, Garcias, and
Romeros but feasts and cock-fights until after the Sixteenth.
Perhaps you need to be told that this is the anniversary of the
Republic, when liberty awoke and cried in the provinces of Old
Mexico. You are aroused at midnight to hear them shouting in the
streets, "Vive la Libertad!" answered from the houses and
the recesses of the vines, "Vive la Mexico!" At sunrise
shots are fired commemorating the tragedy of unhappy Maximilian,
and then music, the noblest of national hymns, as the great flag of
Old Mexico floats up the flag-pole in the bare little plaza of
shabby Las Uvas. The sun over Pine Mountain greets the eagle of
Montezuma before it touches the vineyards and the town, and the day
begins with a great shout. By and by there will be a reading of
the Declaration of Independence and an address punctured by
vives; all the town in its best dress, and some exhibits of
horsemanship that make lathered bits and bloody spurs; also a
cock-fight.
By night there will be dancing, and such music! old Santos to
play the flute, a little lean man with a saintly countenance, young
Garcia whose guitar has a soul, and Carrasco with the
violin. They sit on a high platform above the dancers in the
candle flare, backed by the red, white, and green of Old Mexico,
and play fervently such music as you will not hear otherwhere.
At midnight the flag comes down. Count yourself at a loss if
you are not moved by that performance. Pine Mountain watches
whitely overhead, shepherd fires glow strongly on the glooming
hills. The plaza, the bare glistening pole, the dark folk, the
bright dresses, are lit ruddily by a bonfire. It leaps up to the
eagle flag, dies down, the music begins softly and aside. They
play airs of old longing and exile; slowly out of the dark the flag
drops down, bellying and falling with the midnight draught.
Sometimes a hymn is sung, always there are tears. The flag is
down; Tony Sevadra has received it in his arms. The music strikes
a barbaric swelling tune, another flag begins a slow ascent,--it
takes a breath or two to realize that they are both, flag and tune,
the Star Spangled Banner,--a volley is fired, we are back, if you
please, in California of America. Every youth who has the blood of
patriots in him lays ahold on Tony Sevadra's flag, happiest if he
can get a corner of it. The music goes before, the folk fall in
two and two, singing. They sing everything, America, the
Marseillaise, for the sake of the French shepherds hereabout, the
hymn of Cuba, and the Chilian national air to comfort two
families of that land. The flag goes to Dona Ina's, with the
candlesticks and the altar cloths, then Las Uvas eats tamales and
dances the sun up the slope of Pine Mountain.
You are not to suppose that they do not keep the Fourth,
Washington's Birthday, and Thanksgiving at the town of the grape
vines. These make excellent occasions for quitting work and
dancing, but the Sixteenth is the holiday of the heart. On
Memorial Day the graves have garlands and new pictures of the
saints tacked to the headboards. There is great virtue in an
Ave said in the Camp of the Saints. I like that name which
the Spanish speaking people give to the garden of the dead,
Campo Santo, as if it might be some bed of healing from
which blind souls and sinners rise up whole and praising God.
Sometimes the speech of simple folk hints at truth the
understanding does not reach. I am persuaded only a complex soul
can get any good of a plain religion. Your earthborn is a poet and
a symbolist. We breed in an environment of asphalt pavements a
body of people whose creeds are chiefly restrictions against other
people's way of life, and have kitchens and latrines under the same
roof that houses their God. Such as these go to church to be
edified, but at Las Uvas they go for pure worship and to entreat
their God. The logicalconclusion of the faith that every good
gift cometh from God is the open hand and the finer courtesy. The
meal done without buys a candle for the neighbor's dead
child. You do foolishly to suppose that the candle does no good.
At Las Uvas every house is a piece of earth--thick walled,
whitewashed adobe that keeps the even temperature of a cave; every
man is an accomplishedhorseman and consequently bowlegged; every
family keeps dogs, flea-bitten mongrels that loll on the earthen
floors. They speak a purer Castilian than obtains in like villages
of Mexico, and the way they count relationship everybody is more or
less akin. There is not much villainy among them. What incentive
to thieving or killing can there be when there is little wealth and
that to be had for the borrowing! If they love too hotly, as we
say "take their meat before grace," so do their betters. Eh, what!
shall a man be a saint before he is dead? And besides, Holy Church
takes it out of you one way or another before all is done. Come
away, you who are obsessed with your own importance in the scheme
of things, and have got nothing you did not sweat for, come away by
the brown valleys and full-bosomed hills to the even-breathing
days, to the kindliness, earthiness, ease of El Pueblo de Las Uvas.
End
the Castros who were his wife's family, all the Saises, Romeros,
and Eschobars,--the relations of his relations-in-law. There you
have the beginning of a pretty considerable town. To these accrued
much of the Spanish California float swept out of the southwest by
eastern enterprise. They slacked away again when the price of
silver went down, and the ore dwindled in La Golondrina. All the
hot eddy of mining life swept away from that corner of the hills,
but there were always those too idle, too poor to move, or too
easily content with El Pueblo de Las Uvas.
Nobody comes nowadays to the town of the grape vines except,
as we say, "with the breath of crying," but of these enough. All
the low sills run over with small heads. Ah, ah! There is a kind
of pride in that if you did but know it, to have your baby every
year or so as the time sets, and keep a full breast. So great a
blessing as marriage is easily come by. It is told of Ruy Garcia
that when he went for his marriage license he lacked a dollar of
the clerk's fee, but borrowed it of the sheriff, who expected
reelection and exhibited thereby a commendable thrift. Of what
account is it to lack meal or meat when you may have it of
any neighbor? Besides, there is sometimes a point of honor in
these things. Jesus Romero, father of ten, had a job sacking ore
in the Marionette which he gave up of his own accord. "Eh, why?"
said Jesus, "for my fam'ly."
"It is so, senora," he said solemnly, "I go to the Marionette,
I work, I eat meat--pie--frijoles--good, ver' good. I come home
sad'day nigh' I see my fam'ly. I play lil' game poker with the
boys, have lil' drink wine, my money all gone. My fam'ly have no
money, nothing eat. All time I work at mine I eat, good, ver' good
grub. I think sorry for my fam'ly. No, no, senora, I no work no
more that Marionette, I stay with my fam'ly." The wonder of it is,
I think, that the family had the same point of view.
Every house in the town of the vines has its garden plot, corn
and brown beans and a row of peppers reddening in the sun; and in
damp borders of the irrigating ditches clumps of
yerbasanta, horehound, catnip, and spikenard, wholesome herbs and
curative, but if no peppers then nothing at all. You will have for
a holiday dinner, in Las Uvas, soup with meat balls and chile in
it, chicken with chile, rice with chile, fried beans with more
chile, enchilada, which is corn cake with the sauce of chile and
tomatoes, onion, grated cheese, and olives, and for a relish chile
tepines passed about in a dish, all of which is comfortable
and corrective to the stomach. You will have wine which
every man makes for himself, of good body and inimitable bouquet,
and sweets that are not nearly so nice as they look.
There are two occasions when you may count on that kind of a
meal; always on the Sixteenth of September, and on the two-yearly
visits of Father Shannon. It is absurd, of course, that El Pueblo
de Las Uvas should have an Irish priest, but Black Rock, Minton,
Jimville, and all that country round do not find it so. Father
Shannon visits them all, waits by the Red Butte to confess the
shepherds who go through with their flocks, carries blessing to
small and isolated mines, and so in the course of a year or so
works around to Las Uvas to bury and marry and christen. Then all
the little graves in the Campo Santo are brave with tapers,
the brown pine headboards blossom like Aaron's rod with paper roses
and bright cheap prints of Our Lady of Sorrows. Then the Senora
Sevadra, who thinks herself elect of heaven for that office,
gathers up the original sinners, the little Elijias, Lolas,
Manuelitas, Joses, and Felipes, by dint of adjurations and sweets
smuggled into small perspiring palms, to fit them for the
Sacrament.
I used to peek in at them, never so softly, in Dona Ina's
living-room; Raphael-eyed little imps, going sidewise on their
knees to rest them from the bare floor, candles lit on the mantel
to give a religious air, and a great sheaf of wild bloom
before the Holy Family. Come Sunday they set out the altar in the
schoolhouse, with the fine-drawn altar cloths, the beaten silver
candlesticks, and the wax images, chief glory of Las Uvas, brought
up mule-back from Old Mexico forty years ago. All in white the
communicants go up two and two in a hushed, sweet awe to take the
body of their Lord, and Tomaso, who is priest's boy, tries not to
look unduly puffed up by his office. After that you have dinner
and a bottle of wine that ripened on the sunny slope of Escondito.
All the week Father Shannon has shriven his people, who bring clean
conscience to the betterment of appetite, and the Father sets them
an example. Father Shannon is rather big about the middle to
accommodate the large laugh that lives in him, but a most shrewd
searcher of hearts. It is reported that one derives comfort from
his confessional, and I for my part believe it.
The celebration of the Sixteenth, though it comes every year,
takes as long to prepare for as Holy Communion. The senoritas have
each a new dress apiece, the senoras a new rebosa. The
young gentlemen have new silver trimmings to their sombreros,
unspeakable ties, silk handkerchiefs, and new leathers to their
spurs. At this time when the peppers glow in the gardens and the
young quail cry "cuidado," "have a care!" you can hear the
plump, plump of the metate from the alcoves of the vines where
comfortable old dames, whose experience gives them the touch of art,
are pounding out corn for tamales.
School-teachers from abroad have tried before now at Las Uvas
to have school begin on the first of September, but got nothing
else to stir in the heads of the little Castros, Garcias, and
Romeros but feasts and cock-fights until after the Sixteenth.
Perhaps you need to be told that this is the anniversary of the
Republic, when liberty awoke and cried in the provinces of Old
Mexico. You are aroused at midnight to hear them shouting in the
streets, "Vive la Libertad!" answered from the houses and
the recesses of the vines, "Vive la Mexico!" At sunrise
shots are fired commemorating the tragedy of unhappy Maximilian,
and then music, the noblest of national hymns, as the great flag of
Old Mexico floats up the flag-pole in the bare little plaza of
shabby Las Uvas. The sun over Pine Mountain greets the eagle of
Montezuma before it touches the vineyards and the town, and the day
begins with a great shout. By and by there will be a reading of
the Declaration of Independence and an address punctured by
vives; all the town in its best dress, and some exhibits of
horsemanship that make lathered bits and bloody spurs; also a
cock-fight.
By night there will be dancing, and such music! old Santos to
play the flute, a little lean man with a saintly countenance, young
Garcia whose guitar has a soul, and Carrasco with the
violin. They sit on a high platform above the dancers in the
candle flare, backed by the red, white, and green of Old Mexico,
and play fervently such music as you will not hear otherwhere.
At midnight the flag comes down. Count yourself at a loss if
you are not moved by that performance. Pine Mountain watches
whitely overhead, shepherd fires glow strongly on the glooming
hills. The plaza, the bare glistening pole, the dark folk, the
bright dresses, are lit ruddily by a bonfire. It leaps up to the
eagle flag, dies down, the music begins softly and aside. They
play airs of old longing and exile; slowly out of the dark the flag
drops down, bellying and falling with the midnight draught.
Sometimes a hymn is sung, always there are tears. The flag is
down; Tony Sevadra has received it in his arms. The music strikes
a barbaric swelling tune, another flag begins a slow ascent,--it
takes a breath or two to realize that they are both, flag and tune,
the Star Spangled Banner,--a volley is fired, we are back, if you
please, in California of America. Every youth who has the blood of
patriots in him lays ahold on Tony Sevadra's flag, happiest if he
can get a corner of it. The music goes before, the folk fall in
two and two, singing. They sing everything, America, the
Marseillaise, for the sake of the French shepherds hereabout, the
hymn of Cuba, and the Chilian national air to comfort two
families of that land. The flag goes to Dona Ina's, with the
candlesticks and the altar cloths, then Las Uvas eats tamales and
dances the sun up the slope of Pine Mountain.
You are not to suppose that they do not keep the Fourth,
Washington's Birthday, and Thanksgiving at the town of the grape
vines. These make excellent occasions for quitting work and
dancing, but the Sixteenth is the holiday of the heart. On
Memorial Day the graves have garlands and new pictures of the
saints tacked to the headboards. There is great virtue in an
Ave said in the Camp of the Saints. I like that name which
the Spanish speaking people give to the garden of the dead,
Campo Santo, as if it might be some bed of healing from
which blind souls and sinners rise up whole and praising God.
Sometimes the speech of simple folk hints at truth the
understanding does not reach. I am persuaded only a complex soul
can get any good of a plain religion. Your earthborn is a poet and
a symbolist. We breed in an environment of asphalt pavements a
body of people whose creeds are chiefly restrictions against other
people's way of life, and have kitchens and latrines under the same
roof that houses their God. Such as these go to church to be
edified, but at Las Uvas they go for pure worship and to entreat
their God. The logicalconclusion of the faith that every good
gift cometh from God is the open hand and the finer courtesy. The
meal done without buys a candle for the neighbor's dead
child. You do foolishly to suppose that the candle does no good.
At Las Uvas every house is a piece of earth--thick walled,
whitewashed adobe that keeps the even temperature of a cave; every
man is an accomplishedhorseman and consequently bowlegged; every
family keeps dogs, flea-bitten mongrels that loll on the earthen
floors. They speak a purer Castilian than obtains in like villages
of Mexico, and the way they count relationship everybody is more or
less akin. There is not much villainy among them. What incentive
to thieving or killing can there be when there is little wealth and
that to be had for the borrowing! If they love too hotly, as we
say "take their meat before grace," so do their betters. Eh, what!
shall a man be a saint before he is dead? And besides, Holy Church
takes it out of you one way or another before all is done. Come
away, you who are obsessed with your own importance in the scheme
of things, and have got nothing you did not sweat for, come away by
the brown valleys and full-bosomed hills to the even-breathing
days, to the kindliness, earthiness, ease of El Pueblo de Las Uvas.
End
- beginning [bi´giniŋ]
n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词) - considerable [kən´sidərəbəl] a.重要的；值得重视 (初中英语单词)
- california [,kæli´fɔ:njə] n.加利福尼亚 (初中英语单词)
- enterprise [´entəpraiz] n.企业；雄心；胆识 (初中英语单词)
- breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
- sheriff [´ʃerif] n.郡长；行政长官 (初中英语单词)
- thereby [´ðeəbai] ad.因此，由此 (初中英语单词)
- accord [ə´kɔ:d] n.&vi.符合 vt.给与 (初中英语单词)
- holiday [´hɔlidi] n.假日，假期，节日 (初中英语单词)
- cheese [tʃi:z] n.干酪，乳酪 (初中英语单词)
- stomach [´stʌmək] n.胃；胃口，食欲 (初中英语单词)
- absurd [əb´sə:d] a.荒谬的，可笑的 (初中英语单词)
- priest [pri:st] n.教士；牧师；神父 (初中英语单词)
- confess [kən´fes] vt.供认；坦白；承认 (初中英语单词)
- blessing [´blesiŋ] n.祝福 (初中英语单词)
- blossom [´blɔsəm] n.花；开花期 vi.开花 (初中英语单词)
- softly [´sɔftli] ad.软化地；柔和地 (初中英语单词)
- beaten [´bi:tn] beat 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- mexico [´meksikəu] n.墨西哥 (初中英语单词)
- appetite [´æpitait] n.欲望；食欲 (初中英语单词)
- abroad [ə´brɔ:d] ad.海外；到处；广泛 (初中英语单词)
- midnight [´midnait] n.午夜；漆黑 (初中英语单词)
- tragedy [´trædʒidi] n.悲剧；惨案；灾难 (初中英语单词)
- unhappy [ʌn´hæpi] a.不幸的；不快乐的 (初中英语单词)
- reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
- independence [,indi´pendəns] n.独立，自主，自立 (初中英语单词)
- bloody [´blʌdi] a.(流)血的；血腥的 (初中英语单词)
- countenance [´kauntinəns] n.面部表情；脸色；面容 (初中英语单词)
- platform [´plætfɔ:m] n.(平)台；讲台；站台 (初中英语单词)
- performance [pə´fɔ:məns] n.履行；行为；工作 (初中英语单词)
- overhead [´əuvə,hed] ad.当头 a.在头上的 (初中英语单词)
- shepherd [´ʃepəd] n.牧羊人 vt.带领 (初中英语单词)
- strongly [´strɔŋli] ad.强烈地；强有力地 (初中英语单词)
- virtue [´və:tʃu:] n.美德；贞操；长处 (初中英语单词)
- complex [´kɔmpleks] a.复杂的 n.综合企业 (初中英语单词)
- chiefly [´tʃi:fli] ad.主要地；尤其 (初中英语单词)
- worship [´wə:ʃip] n.&v.崇拜；敬仰 (初中英语单词)
- conclusion [kən´klu:ʒən] n.结束；结论；推论 (初中英语单词)
- wealth [welθ] n.财富，财产 (初中英语单词)
- southwest [,sauθ´west] n.&a.西南(方)(的) (高中英语单词)
- mining [´mainiŋ] n.采矿；矿业 (高中英语单词)
- solemnly [´sɔləmli] ad.严肃地，庄严地 (高中英语单词)
- wholesome [´həulsəm] a.有益于健康的 (高中英语单词)
- relish [´reliʃ] n.滋味；风味 v.品尝 (高中英语单词)
- celebration [,seli´breiʃən] n.庆祝(会)；庆典 (高中英语单词)
- declaration [,deklə´reiʃən] n.宣布；宣言；申报 (高中英语单词)
- longing [´lɔŋiŋ] n.&a.渴望(的) (高中英语单词)
- thanksgiving [´θæŋks,giviŋ] 感恩节 (高中英语单词)
- environment [in´vaiərənmənt] n.郊区；周围；条件 (高中英语单词)
- courtesy [´kə:tisi] n.礼貌；殷勤；好意 (高中英语单词)
- horseman [´hɔ:smən] n.骑手，马术师 (高中英语单词)
- consequently [´kɔnsikwəntli] ad.因此，所以 (高中英语单词)
- relationship [ri´leiʃənʃip] n.关系；联系；亲属关系 (高中英语单词)
- thrift [θrift] n.节俭，节约 (英语四级单词)
- communion [kə´mju:niən] n.共享；交流；圣餐 (英语四级单词)
- apiece [ə´pi:s] ad.每个，每件，每人 (英语四级单词)
- anniversary [,æni´və:səri] n.周年纪念(日) (英语四级单词)
- volley [´vɔli] n.&v.齐射；(话)迸发 (英语四级单词)
- asphalt [´æsfælt] n.沥青 (英语四级单词)
- logical [´lɔdʒikəl] a.逻辑(上)的 (英语四级单词)
- accomplished [ə´kʌmpliʃt] a.完成了的；熟练的 (英语四级单词)
- christen [´krisən] vt.为...施洗礼 (英语六级单词)
- guitar [gi´tɑ:] n.吉他，六弦琴 (英语六级单词)
- fervently [´fə:vəntli] ad.火热地，热烈地 (英语六级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
- foolishly [´fu:liʃli] ad.愚蠢地 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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