Silas Marner George Eliot(乔治艾略特).pdf

SILAS MARNER
SILAS MARNER
by e Eliot
"A child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to
declining man, Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts."
--WORDSWORTH.
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SILAS MARNER
PART ONE
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SILAS MARNER
CHAPTER I
In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the
farmhouses-- and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had
their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak--there might be seen in districts
far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid
undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like
the remnants of a disinherited race. The shepherd's dog barked fiercely
when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against
the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy
bag?--and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious
burden. The shepherd himself, though he had good reason to believe that
the bag held nothing but flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong linen
spun from that thread, was not quite sure that this trade of weaving,
indispensable though it was, could be carried on entirely without the help
of the Evil One. In that far-off time superstition clung easily round every
person or thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and
occasional merely, like the visits of the pedlar or the knife-grinder. No
one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and how
was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew
his father and mother? To the peasants of old times, the world outside their
own direct experience was a region of vagueness and mystery: to their
untravelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim as the
winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring; and even a
settler, if he came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased to be viewed with
a remnant of distrust, which would have prevented any surprise if a