外国文学作品欣赏 Edited By Zhu Farong Ding Liqun 主 编 朱法荣 副主编 丁立群 Shandong Agricultural University

Unit Four Essays

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment, and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best, from those thatare learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning, by study; and studies themselves, do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters , flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know, that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. Abeunt studia in mores. Nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies; like as diseases of the body, may have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like. So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again. If his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the Schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases. So every defect of the mind, may have a special receipt.

Abraham Lincoln

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war; testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are mere on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate –we cannot consecrate –we cannot hallow –this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Notes:

Abraham Lincoln was President of the USA during the Civil War, when the North and South were deeply divided on many critical issues--- the most important of which was slavery. Though Lincoln wrote a number of well-known speeches during the course of his long political career, the address at Gettysburg is perhaps the most widely quoted of them all. Since it was first printed, there has hardly been a child of school age in the United States who has not had to study and memorize it. Lincoln was preceded on the program by Edward Everett, whose speech was long and conventional, phrased in the highly ornate style then popular in oratory. Lincoln’s speech, in contrast , was extremely short and simple. It had been composed on the train to Gettysburg and was writing in pencil on the back of an envelope. Some historians say that the people were so moved by Lincoln’s words that they did not applaud; they responded instead with a profound and respectful silence. Ironically enough, Lincoln himself felt that the speech had been a failure.

3.Self-reliance (excerpt)

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some pieces of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, -- as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I do or forbear those actions which mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeeper, -- under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do you wok, and you should reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man’s- buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous words? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of examining the ground of the institution he will do not do such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affection. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not also in a few particulars, authors of a new lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meanwhile nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean “ the foolish face of praise,” the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease, in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved by a low usurping willfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face, with the most disagreeable sensation.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in the public street or in the friend’s parlor. If this aversion had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But then to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.

The other terror that scarce us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts and we are loth to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to reply on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with sharp and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statement and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today. —“ Ah, so you be sure to be misunderstood.” – is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza—read forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite woodlife which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by over actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough today to do right and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the fore-gone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed a united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham’s voice, and dignity into Washington’s port, and America in Adams’s eyes. Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemera. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it today, because it is not of today. We love it and pay it homage because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan life. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the center of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you and all men and all events. Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; -- and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monarchism, of the Hermit Anthony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson, Scipio, Milton called “ the height of Rome;” and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.
4. The Vietnam War

On March 6, 1965, 3,500 U.S.Marines splashed out of their landing craft and waded ashore near the South Vietnamese city of Damang to be greeted by smiling officials. The landing was to prove a fateful event for America. President Lyndon B. Johnson had come to the conclusion that large numbers of US combat troops would have to be committed to the ground war in South Vietnam. The Marines were the advance guard of the 3 million American men who eventually would be deployed in the longest and most unpopular war in US history.

President Johnson had inherited the problem of Vietnam from his predecessors. In the late 1950’s President Eisenhower, fearful that the Communists would take over the former French colony, increased the number of US military advisers to the Saigon government from 323 to 685. President Kennedy deepened the American commitment, raising the US force to 23,000 and shipping much equipment to South Vietnam. Still, the Communists-chiefly local Vietcong, who were supported by disciplined cadres from North Vietnam-continued to gain strength.

Johnson, succeeding to the Presidency after Kennedy’s assassination, was determined to prevent a Communist Victory. In August 1964 the Navy reported an attack on two US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnamese PT boats. Johnson used the incident as the basis for requesting blanket authority from Congress to take any military measures he deemed necessary in Southeast Asia. Early in 1965 he ordered US aircraft into action against Vietnam, and soon after he unveiled Operation Rolling Thunder------a massive bombing campaign against North Vietnam. By the end of the year 185,000 American troops were engaged in fighting.

The Americans fought well, but this was a new and unconventional kind of war. For the most part it was fought by small units in the jungles and rice paddies, and all too often it was impossible to tell who was a friendly villager and who was a Vietcong guerilla. As the statistics of American dead and wounded rose, antiwar sentiment in the US spread. Thanks to television, the horrors of war were brought home to the American public as never before. Peace groups demonstrated all across the country, and students fled into exile rather than serve in Vietnam. World opinion turned against the US.

President Johnson made many attempts to initiate peace talks with Hanoi during 1966 and 1967, but the North Vietnamese refused to talk unless the US first halted its bombing unconditionally. The US in turn, would not agree to stop the bombing until North Vietnamese curtailed military operations in the south. And so the fighting continued, with the North Vietnamese pouring in fresh forces and the US bring its troop strength to more than half a million. For a time it looked as if the Communists were beaten, but on January 30,1968, during Tet, the Buddhist New Year, they struck at major cities across South Vietnam. The Communists held the city of Hue for 25 days and created havoc in Saingon, but were beaten back.

The Tet offensive nevertheless had a profound impact on the US, spurring the peace movement and dismaying administration supporters. Dejected and weary, President Johnson, on March31,1968, announced a partial unilateral halt to the bombing of North Vietnam and invited Hanoi to the peace table. At the same time he stated that he would not seek another term as President. Three days later Hanoi agreed to take part in preliminary talks, and in May those exchanges began in Paris. But the two sides haggled endlessly over procedural matters (including the size and shape of the conference table), and not until the early days of President Richard .Nixon’s administration did they start discussing substantive matters.

In March 1972, after more than 3 years of talks in Paris, North Vietnam again tried for military victory, launching attacks in many sectors of the south. In retaliation President Nixon authorized punishing air raids on the north and bad Navy planes mine Haiphong harbor. Finally, on January 27, 1973, all parties to the war signed an accord calling for the withdrawal of US troops (completed March 29,1973) and the war ended early in 1975 with the surrender of South Vietnam. The US legacy is $150-billion war debt and 56,000deaths left an indelible scar on the American consciousness.

1. 
   Sorrows of the Millionaire by George Bernard Shaw
   

George Bernard Shaw

The millionaire class, a small but growing one into which any of us may be flung tomorrow by the accidents of commerce, is perhaps the most neglected in the community. As far as I know, this is the first tract that has ever been written for millionaires.

In the advertisements of the manufacturers of the country, I find that everything is produced for the million and nothing for the millionaire. Children, boys, youth, “gents”^①, ladies, artisans, professional men, even peers, and kings, are catered for; but the millionaire’s custom is evidently not worth having; there are too few of him. Whilst the poorest have their Rag Fair^②, a duly organized and busy market in Houndsditch, where you can buy a boot for a penny, you may search the world in vain for the market where the ₤50 boot, the special dear line^③ of hats at forty guineas, the cloth of gold bicycling suit, and the Cleopatra claret^④, four pearls to the bottle, can be purchased wholesale.

Thus the unfortunate millionaire has the responsibility of prodigious wealth without the possibility of enjoying himself more than any ordinary rich man. Indeed, in many things he cannot enjoy himself more than many poor men do, nor even so much; for a drum major^⑤ is better dressed; a trainer’s stable lad often rides a better horse; the first-class carriage is shared by office boys taking their young ladies out for the evening; everybody who goes down to Brighton^⑥ for Sunday rides in the Pullman car^⑦; and of what use is it to be able to pay for a peacock’s brain sandwich when there is nothing to be had but ham or beef?

The injustice of this state of things has not been sufficiently considered. A man with an income of ₤25 a year can multiply his comfort beyond all calculation by doubling his income. A man with ₤50 a year can at least quadruple his comfort by doubling his income. Probably up to even ₤250 a year doubled income means doubled comfort. After that the increment of comfort grows less in proportion to the increment of income until a point is reached at which the victim is satiated and even surfeited with everything that money can procure. To expect him to enjoy another hundred thousand pounds because men like money, is exactly as if you were to expect a confectioner’s shop-boy to enjoy two hours more work a day because boys are fond of sweets. What can the wretched millionaire do that needs a million? Does he want a fleet of yachts, a Rotten Row^⑧ full of carriages, an army of servants, a whole city of town houses, or a continent for a game preserve? Can he attend more than one theatre in one evening, or wear more than one suit at a time, or digest more meals than his butler? Is it a luxury to have more money to take care of, more begging betters to read, and to be cut off from those delicious Alnaschar dreams^⑨ in which the poor man, sitting down to consider what he will do in the always possible event of some unknown relative leaving him a fortune, forgets his privation.

And yet there is no sympathy for this hidden sorrow of Plutocracy. The poor alone are pitied. Societies spring up in all directions to relieve all sorts of comparatively happy people, from discharged prisoners in the first rapture of their regained liberty to children reveling in the luxury of an unlimited appetite; but no hand is stretched out to the millionaire, except to beg. In all our dealing with him lies implicit the delusion that he has nothing to complain of, and that he ought to be ashamed of rolling in wealth whilst others are starving.
Notes:

1. 
   gents: （俗）绅士。
   
2. 
   Rag Fair: 旧衣市场。
   
3. 
   line: （一类）货色。
   
4. 
   Cleopatra claret: 克娄巴特拉牌红葡萄酒。克娄巴特拉为公元前51年至公元前30年的埃及女王。以她命名以示高贵。
   
5. 
   drum major: 行进中的军乐队的指挥。
   
6. 
   Brighton: 布赖顿，英国城市。
   
7. 
   Pullman car: 普尔门式客车——有舒适的单人座位并可供应酒食的火车客车。
   
8. 
   Rotten Row: 伦敦海德公园中的骑马道。
   
9. 
   Alnaschar dreams: 《天方夜谭》故事， Alnaschar（阿那司卡）用所有的钱买了一筐玻璃器皿，想以此发财致富并结婚。由于向想象中的妻子发脾气，他一脚踢翻筐子，玻璃器皿尽毁。故事寓意类似我国的“黄粱梦”之类。
   

2. 
   Man Will Prevail by William Faulkner
   

William Faulkner

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work---a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all, for profit, but to create out of the material of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It would not be difficult to find a dedication for money part of it commensurate for the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women, already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear^① so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit, there is only the question. “When will I be blown up?” Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problem of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart. The old universal truths, lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed: love and honor and pity and pride, and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse^②. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope, and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His grief weaves on no universal bones^③, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearned these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It’s easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure, that from the last ding-dong of doom^④ has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock^⑤ hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then, there will be one more sound: that of his puny and inexhaustible voice still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure, he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion, and sacrifice, and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s duty is to write about these things. It’s his privilege to help man endure, by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage, and honor and hope and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

Notes:

①“普遍的、全球性的肉体上的恐惧”指的是二战后帝国主义宣扬“原子弹恐怖症”所造成的恶果。福克纳认为这是“当代的悲剧”。

③ universal bones: 大家为之悲哀的东西。

④ ding-dong of doom: 丧钟声。

⑤ rock: 本意为岩石，在宗教上的比喻义为避难所，见《圣经·旧约·撒母耳记下》第22章：The God is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer. (上帝是我的避难所，我的堡垒，我的救星。)

1. 
   The Rocking-Horse Winner By D.H. Lawrence
   

There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck.  She married for love, and the love turned to dust.  She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them. They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her.   And hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault in herself. Yet what it was that she must cover up she never knew. Nevertheless, when her children were present, she always felt the centre of her heart go hard. This troubled her, and in her manner she was all the more gentle and anxious for her children, as if she loved them very much.  Only she herself knew that at the centre of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody.  Everybody else said of her: "She is such a good mother. She adores her children."  Only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so.  They read it in each other's eyes.

There were a boy and two little girls. They lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighbourhood.

Although they lived in style, they felt always an anxiety in the house.  There was never enough money.  The mother had a small income, and the father had a small income, but not nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up.   The father went in to town to some office.  But though he had good prospects, these prospects never materialized. There was always the grinding sense of the shortage of money, though the style was always kept up.

At last the mother said:  "I will see if I can't make something." But she did not know where to begin.  She racked her brains, and tried this thing and the other, but could not find anything successful.   The failure made deep lines come into her face.  Her children were growing up, they would have to go to school.  There must be more money, there must be more money. The father, who was always very handsome and expensive in his tastes, seemed as if he never would be able to do anything worth doing.  And the mother, who had a great belief in herself, did not succeed any better, and her tastes were just as expensive.

And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money !   There must be more money !   The children could hear it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys filled the nursery.  Behind the shining modern rocking-horse, behind the smart doll's-house, a voice would start whispering:  "There must be more money !   There must be more money ! "

It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking-horse, and even the horse, bending his wooden, champing head, heard it. The big doll, sitting so pink and smirking in her new pram, could hear it quite plainly, and seemed to be smirking all the more self-consciously because of it. The foolish puppy, too, that took the place of the teddy-bear, he was looking so extraordinarily foolish for no other reason but that he heard the secret whisper all over the house:  "There must be more money ! "

Yet nobody ever said it aloud.  The whisper was everywhere, and therefore no one spoke it.  Just as no one ever says: "We are breathing ! "   in spite of the fact that breath is coming and going all the time.

"Mother," said the boy Paul one day, "why don't we keep a car of our own?  Why do we always use uncle's or else a taxi?"

"Because we're the poor members of the family," said the mother.

"But why are we, mother?"

"Well --- I suppose," she said slowly and bitterly,  "it's because your father has no luck."

The boy was silent for some time.

"Is luck money, mother?" he asked, rather timidly.

"No, Paul.  Not quite.  It's what causes you to have money."

"Oh ! " said Paul vaguely. "I thought when Uncle Oscar said  filthy lucker, it meant money."

"Filthy lucre does mean money," said the mother,   "But it's lucre, not luck."

"Oh ! " said the boy. "Then what is luck, mother?"

"It's what causes you to have money. If you're lucky you have money. That' s why it's better to be born lucky than rich. If you're rich, you may lose your money. But if you're lucky, you will always get more money."

"Oh!   Will you?  And is father not lucky?"

"Very unlucky, I should say," she said bitterly.

The boy watched her with unsure eyes.

"Why?"  he asked.

"I don't know.  Nobody ever knows why one person is lucky and another unlucky."

"Don't they?  Nobody at all?  Does nobody know?"

"Perhaps God.  But He never tells."

"He ought to, then.  And aren't you lucky either, mother?"

"I can't be, if I married an unlucky husband."

"But by yourself, aren't you?"

"I used to think I was, before I married. Now I think I am very unlucky indeed."

"Why?"

"Well --- never mind !   Perhaps I'm not really," she said.

"Well, anyhow," he said stoutly, "I'm a lucky person."

"Why?" said his mother, with a sudden laugh.

He stared at her.  He didn't even know why he had said it.

"God told me,"  he asserted, brazening it out.

"I hope He did, dear ! "

"He did, mother ! "

"Excellent ! "  said the mother, using one of her husband's exclamations.

The boy saw she did not believe him; or, rather, that she paid no attention to his assertion. This angered him somewhat, and made him want to compel her attention.

He went off by himself, vaguely, in a childish way, seeking for the clue to "luck."  Absorbed, taking no heed of other people, he went about with a sort of stealth, seeking inwardly for luck.  He wanted luck, he wanted it, he wanted it.  When the two girls were playing dolls in the nursery, he would sit on his big rocking-horse, charging madly into space, with a frenzy that made the little girls peer at him uneasily.  Wildly the horse careered, the waving dark hair of the boy tossed, his eyes had a strange glare in them.  The little girls dared not speak to him.

When he had ridden to the end of his mad little journey, he climbed down and stood in front of his rocking-horse, staring fixedly into its lowered face. Its red mouth was slightly open, its big eye was wide and glassy-bright.

"Now ! "  he would silent command the snorting steed,  "Now, take me to where there is luck !   Now take me ! "

And he would slash the horse on the neck with the little whip he had asked Uncle Oscar for.  He knew the horse could take him to where there was luck, if only he forced it.  So he would mount again, and start on his furious ride, hoping at last to get there.  He knew he could get there.

"You'll break your horse, Paul ! "  said the nurse.

"He always riding like that !   I wish he'd leave off ! " said his elder sister Joan.

But he only glared down on them in silence.  Nurse gave him up.  She could make nothing of him.  Anyhow he was growing beyond her.

One day his mother and his Uncle Oscar came in when he was on one of his furious rides.  He did not speak to them.

"Hallo, you young jockey !   Riding a winner?"  said his uncle.

"Aren't you growing too big for a rocking-horse?  You're not a very little boy any longer, you know,"  said his mother.

But Paul only gave a blue glare from his big, rather close-set eyes. He would speak to nobody when he was in full tilt. His mother watched him with an anxious expression on her face.

At last he suddenly stopped forcing his horse into the mechanical gallop, and slid down.

"Well, I got there ! "   he announced fiercely, his blue eyes still flaring, and his sturdy long legs straddling apart.

"Where did you get to?"  asked his mother.

"Where I wanted to go," he flared back at her.

"That's right, son ! "  said Uncle Oscar.  "Don't you stop till you get there.   What's the horse's name?"

"He doesn't have a name,"  said the boy.

"Gets on without all right?" asked the uncle.

"Well, he has different names.   He was called Sansovino last week."

"Sansovino, eh?  Won the Ascot.  How did you know his name?"

"He always talks about horse-races with Bassett," said Joan.

The uncle was delighted to find that his small nephew was posted with all the racing news.  Bassett, the young gardener, who had been wounded in the left foot in the war and got his present job through Oscar Cresswell, whose batman he had been, was a perfect blade of the "turf."  He lived in the racing events, and the small boy lived with him.

Oscar Cresswell got it all from Bassett.

"Master Paul comes and asks me, so I can't do more than tell him, sir," said Bassett, his face terribly serious, as if he were speaking of religious matters.

"And does he ever put anything on a horse he fancies?"

"Well --- I don't want to give him away --- he's a young sport, a fine sport, sir.  Would you mind asking him himself? He sort of takes a pleasure in it, and perhaps he'd feel I was giving him away, sir, if you don't mind."

Bassett was serious as a church.

The uncle went back to his nephew, and took him off for a ride in the car.

"Say, Paul, old man, do you ever put anything on a horse?"  the uncle asked.

The boy watched the handsome man closely.

"Why, do you think I oughtn't to?"  he parried.

"Not a bit of it !   I thought perhaps you might give me a tip for the Lincoln."

The car sped on into the country, going down to Uncle Oscar's place in Hampshire.

"Honour bright?"  said the nephew.

"Honour bright, son ! "  said the uncle.

"Well, then, Daffodil."

"Daffodil !    I doubt it, sonny.   What about Mirza?"

"I only know the winner," said the boy.  "That's Daffodil."

"Daffodil, eh?"

There was a pause.   Daffodil was an obscure horse comparatively.

"Uncle ! "

"Yes, son?"

"You won't let it go any further, will you? I promised Basset."

"Bassett be damned, old man !   What's he got to do with it?"

"We're partners.  We've been partners from the first, Uncle, he lent me my first five shillings, which I lost.  I promised him, honour bright, it was only between me and him; only you gave me that ten-shilling note I started winning with, so I thought you were lucky. You won't let it go any further, will you?"

The boy gazed at his uncle from those big, hot, blue eyes, set rather close together.  The uncle stirred and laughed uneasily.

"Right you are, son !   I'll keep your tip private.  Daffodil, eh?  How much are you putting on him?"

"All except twenty pounds," said the boy. "I keep that in reserve."

The uncle thought it a good joke.

"You keep twenty pounds in reserve, do you, you young romancer?  What are you betting, then?"

"I'm betting three hundred," said the boy gravely.  "But it's between you and me, Uncle Oscar ! Honour bright?"

The uncle burst into a roar of laughter.

"It's between you and me all right, you young Nat Gould," he said, laughing.  "But where's your three hundred?"

"Bassett keeps it for me. We're partners."

"You are, are you !   And what is Bassett putting on Daffodil?"

"He won't go quite as high as I do, I expect.  Perhaps he'll go a hundred and fifty."

"What, pennies?" laughed the uncle.

"Pounds," said the child, with a surprised look at his uncle.  "Bassett keeps a bigger reserve than I do."

Between wonder and amusement Uncle Oscar was silent.  He pursued the matter no further, but he determined to take his nephew with him to the Lincoln races.

"Now, son,"  he said, "I'm putting twenty on Mirza, and I'll put five for you on any horse you fancy.  "What's your pick?

"Daffodil, uncle."

"No, not the fiver on Daffodil ! "

"I should if it was my own fiver,"  said the child.

"Good !  Good !  Right you are !  A fiver for me and a fiver for you on Daffodil."

The child had never been to a race-meeting before, and his eyes were blue fire.  He pursed his mouth tight, and watched. A Frenchman just in front had put his money on Lancelot.  Wild with excitement, he flayed his arms up and down, yelling "Lancelot !  Lancelot ! "  in his French accent.

Daffodil came in first, Lancelot second, Mirza third.

The child, flushed and with eyes blazing, was curiously serene.  His uncle brought him four five-pound notes, four to one.

"What am I do with these?"   he cried, waving them before the boy's eyes.

"I suppose we'll talk to Bassett," said the boy.  "I expect I have fifteen hundred now; and twenty in reserve; and this twenty."

His uncle studied him for some moments.

"Look here, son ! "  he said.   "You're not serious about Bassett and that fifteen hundred, are you?"

"Yes, I am.  But it's between you and me, uncle.  Honour bright ! "

"Honour bright all right, son !  But I must talk to Bassett."

"If you'd like to be a partner, uncle, with Bassett and me, we could all be partners.  Only, you'd have to promise, honour bright, uncle, not to let it go beyond us three. Bassett and I are lucky, and you must be lucky, because it was your ten shillings I started winning with . . ."

Uncle Oscar took both Bassett and Paul into Richmond Park for an afternoon, and there they talked.

"It's like this, you see, sir,  "Master Paul would get me talking about racing events, spinning yarns, you know, sir. And he was always keen on knowing if I'd made or if I'd lost.  It's about a year since, now, that I put five shilling on Blush of Dawn for him --- and we lost.  Then the luck turned, with that ten shillings he had from you, that we put on Singhalese. And since that time, it's been pretty steady, all things considering.  What do you say, Master Paul?"

"We're all right when we're sure," said Paul.  "It's when we're not quite so sure that we go down."

"Oh, but we're careful then," said Bassett.

"But when are you sure?" smiled Uncle Oscar.

"It's Master Paul, sir,"  said Bassett in a secret, religious voice.  "It's as if he had it from heaven.  Like Daffodil, now, for the Lincoln.  That was as sure as eggs."

"Did you put anything on Daffodil?" asked Oscar Cresswell.

"Yes, sir.  I made my bit."

"And my nephew?"

Bassett was obstinately silent, looking at Paul.

"I made twelve hundred, didn't I, Basset?  I told uncle I was putting three hundred on Daffodil."

"That's right," said Bassett, nodding.

"But where's the money?"  asked the uncle.

"I keep it safe locked up, sir.  Master Paul he can have it any minute he likes to ask for it."

"What, fifteen hundred pounds?"

"And twenty !   And forty, that is, with the twenty he made on the course."

"It's amazing ! "  said the uncle.

"If Master Paul offers you to be partners, sir, I would, if I were you; if you'll excuse me," said Bassett.

Oscar Cresswell thought about it.

"I'll see the money," he said.

They drove home again, and sure enough, Bassett came round to the garden-house with fifteen hundred pounds in notes. The twenty pounds reserve was left with Joe Glee, in the Turf Commission deposit.

"You see, it's all right, uncle, when I'm sure !   Then we go strong, for all we're worth.  Don't we Bassett?"

"We do that, Master Paul."

"And when are you sure?" said the uncle, laughing.

"Oh, well, sometimes I'm absolutely sure, like about Daffodil, said the boy; "and sometimes I have an idea; and sometime I haven't even an idea, have I, Basset?  Then we're careful, because we mostly go down."

"You do, do you !   And when you're sure, like about Daffodil, what makes you sure, sonny?"

"Oh, well, I don't know," said the boy uneasily. "I'm sure, you know, uncle; that's all."

"It's as if he had it from heaven, sir,"  Bassett reiterated.

"I should say so ! "  said his uncle.

But he became a partner.  And when the Leger was coming on, Paul was "sure" about Lively Spark, which was a quite inconsiderable horse.  The boy insisted on putting a thousand on the horse, Bassett went for five hundred, and Oscar Cresswell two hundred.  Lively Spark came in first, and the betting had been ten to one against him, Paul had made ten thousand.

"You see," he said, "I was absolutely sure of him."

Even Oscar Cresswell had cleared two thousand.

"Look here, son," he said, "this sort of thing makes me nervous."

"It needn't, uncle !   Perhaps I shan't be sure again for a long time."

"But what are you going to do with your money?" asked the uncle.

"Of course," said the boy,  "I started it for mother.  She said she had no luck, because father is unlucky, so I thought if I was lucky, it might stop whispering."

"What might stop whispering?"

"Our house. I hate our house for whispering."

"What does it whisper?"

"Why --- why" --- the boy fidgeted --- "why, I don't know.  But it's always short of money, you know, uncle."

"I know it son, I know it."

"You know people send mother writs, don't you, uncle?"

"I'm afraid I do," said the uncle.

"And then the house whispers, like people laughing at you behind your back.  It's awful, that is !   I thought if I was lucky . . ."

"You might stop it," added the uncle.

The boy watched him with big blue eyes, that had an uncanny cold fire in them, and he said never a word.

"Well, then ! " said the uncle.  "What are we doing?"

"I shouldn't like mother to know I was lucky, said the boy.

"Why not, son?"

"She'd stop me."

"I don't think she would."

"Oh ! " --- and the boy writhed in and odd way --- "I don't want her to know, uncle."

"All right, son !   We'll manage it without her knowing."

They managed it very easily. Paul, at the other's suggestion, handed over five thousand pounds to his uncle, who deposited it with the family lawyer, who was then to inform Paul's mother that a relative had put five thousand pounds into his hands, which sum was to be paid out a thousand pounds at a time, on the mother's birthday, for the next five years.

"So she'll have a birthday present of a thousand pounds for five successive years," said Uncle Oscar.  "I hope it won't make it all the harder for her later."

Paul's mother had her birthday in November.  "The house had been "whispering" worse that ever lately, and, even in spite of his luck, Paul could not bear up against it.  He was very anxious to see the effect of the birthday letter, telling his mother about the thousand pounds.

When there were no visitors, Paul now took his meals with his parents, as he was beyond the nursery control. His mother went into town nearly every day.  She had discovered that she had an odd knack of sketching furs and dress materials, so she worked secretly in the studio of a friend who was the chief "artist" for the leading drapers.  She drew the figures of ladies in furs and ladies in silk and sequins for the newspaper advertisements. This young woman artist earned several thousand pounds a year, but Paul's mother only made several hundred, and she was again dissatisfied.  She so wanted to be first in something, and she did not succeed, even in making sketches for drapery advertisements.

She was down to breakfast on the morning of her birthday.  Paul watched her face as she read her letters.  He knew the lawyer's letter.  As his mother read it, her face hardened and became more expressionless. Then a cold, determined look came on her mouth.  She hid the letter under the pile of others, and said not a word about it.

"Didn't you have anything nice in the post for your birthday, mother?" said Paul.

"Quite moderately nice," she said, her voice cold and absent.

She went away to town without saying more.  But in the afternoon Uncle Oscar appeared.  He said Paul's mother had had a long interview with the lawyer, asking if the whole five thousand could not be advanced at once, as she was in debt.

"What do you think, uncle?" said the boy.

"I leave it to you, son."

"Oh, let her have it, then !    We can get some more with the other," said the boy.

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, laddie ! " said Uncle Oscar.

"But I'm sure to know for the Grand National; or the Lincolnshire; or else the Derby.  I'm sure to know for one of them," said Paul.

So Uncle Oscar signed the agreement, and Paul's mother touched the whole five thousand.  Then something very curious happened. The voices in the house suddenly went mad, like a chorus of frogs on a spring evening. There were certain new furnishings, and Paul had a tutor. He was really going to Eton, his father's school, in the following autumn. There were flowers in the winter, and a blossoming of the luxury Paul's mother had been used to. And yet the voices in the house, behind the sprays of mimosa and almond blossom, and from under the piles of iridescent cushions, simply trilled and screamed in a sort of ecstasy: "There must be more money !  Oh-h-h; there must be more money.  Oh, now, now-w !  Now-w-w --- there must be more money ! --- more than ever !   More than ever ! "

It frightened Paul terribly.  He studied away at his Latin and Greek with his tutors.  But his intense hours were spent with Bassett. The Grand National had gone by: he had not "known," and had lost a hundred pounds.  Summer was at hand.  He was in agony for the Lincoln.  But even for the Lincoln he didn't "know," and he lost fifty pounds. He became wild-eyed and strange, as if something were going to explode in him.

"Let it alone, son !   Don't you bother about it ! " urged Uncle Oscar.  But it was as if the boy couldn't really hear what his uncle was saying.

"I've got to know for the Derby !   I've got to know for the Derby ! " the child reiterated, his big blue eyes blazing with a sort of madness.

His mother noticed how overwrought he was.

"You'd better go the seaside. Wouldn't you like to go now to the seaside, instead of waiting?   I think you'd better," she said, looking down at him anxiously, her heart curiously heavy because of him.

But the child lifted his uncanny blue eyes.

"I couldn't possibly go before the Derby, mother ! " he said. "I couldn't possibly ! "

"Why not?" she said, her voice becoming heavy when she was opposed. "Why not?  You can still go from the seaside to see the Derby with your Uncle Oscar, if that's what you wish.  No need for you to wait here.  Besides, I think you care too much about these races.  It's a bad sign.  My family has been a gambling family, and you won't know till you grow up how much damage it has done.  But it has done damage.  I shall have to send Bassett away, and ask Uncle Oscar not to talk racing to you unless you promise to be reasonable about it; go away to the seaside and forget it. You're all nerves ! "

"I'll do what you like, mother, so long as you don't send me away till after the Derby,"  the boy said.

"Send you away from where?  Just from this house?"

"Yes," he said gazing at her.

"Why, you curious child, what makes you care about this house so much, suddenly?  I never knew you loved it."

He gazed at her without speaking.  He had a secret within a secret, something he had not divulged, even to Bassett or to his Uncle Oscar.

But his mother, after standing undecided and a little bit sullen for some moments, said:

"Very well, then !   Don't go to the seaside till after the Derby, if you don't wish it. But promise me you won't let your nerves go to pieces.  Promise you won't think so much about horse-racing and events, as you call them ! "

"Oh, no," said the boy casually.   "I won't think much about them, mother. You needn't worry. I wouldn't worry, mother, if I were you."

"If you were me and I were you," said his mother, "I wonder what we should do ! "

"But you know you needn't worry, mother, don't you?"  the boy repeated.

"I should be awfully glad to know it," she said wearily.

"Oh, well, you  can, you know.  I mean, you ought to know you needn't worry,"  he insisted.

"Ought I? Then I'll see about it,"  she said.

Paul's secret of secrets was his wooden horse, that which had no name.  Since he was emancipated from a nurse and a nursery-governess, he had had his rocking-horse removed to his own bedroom at the top of the house.

"Surely, you're too big for a rocking-horse !"  his mother had remonstrated.

"Well, you see, mother, till I can have a real horse, I like to have some sort of animal about."  Had been his quaint answer.

"Do you feel he keeps you company?" she laughed.

"Oh, yes !   He's very good, he always keeps me company, when I'm there," said Paul.

So the horse, rather shabby, stood in an arrested prance in the boy's bedroom.

The Derby was drawing near, and the boy grew more and more tense.  He hardly heard what was spoken to him, he was very frail, and his eyes were really uncanny.  His mother had sudden strange seizures of uneasiness about him. Sometimes, for half-an-hour, she would feel a sudden anxiety about him that was almost anquish.  She wanted to rush to him at once, and know he was safe.

Two nights before the Derby, she was at a big party in town, when one of her rushes of anxiety about her boy, her first-born, gripped her heart till she could hardly speak.  She fought with the feeling, might and main, for she believed in common-sense.  But it was too strong.  She had to leave the dance and go downstairs to telephone to the country. The children's nursery-governess was terribly surprised and startled at being rung up in the night.

"Are the children all right, Miss Wilmot?"

"Oh, yes, they are quite all right."

"Master Paul?  Is he all right?"

"He went to bed as right as a trivet.  Shall I run up and look at him?"

"No," said Paul's mother reluctantly.  "No !   Don't trouble.  It's all right.  Don't sit up.  We shall be home fairly soon."  She did not want her son's privacy intruded upon.

"Very good," said the governess.

It was about one o'clock when Paul's mother and father drove up to their house.  All was still.  Paul's mother went to her room and slipped off her white fur cloak.  She had told her maid not to wait up for her.  She heard her husband downstairs, mixing a whisky-and-soda.

And then, because of the strange anxiety at her heart, she stole upstairs to her son's room.  Noiselessly she went along the upper corridor.  Was there a faint noise?  What was it?

She stood, with arrested muscles, outside his door, listening.  There was a strange, heavy, and yet not loud noise. Her heart stood still.  It was a soundless noise, yet rushing and powerful.  Something huge, in violent, hushed motion. What was it?  What in God's name was it?  She ought to know.  She felt that she knew the noise.  She knew what it was.

Yet she could not place it.  She couldn't say what it was.  And on and on it went, like a madness.

Softly, frozen with anxiety and fear, she turned the door-handle.

The room was dark.  Yet in the space near the window, she heard and saw something plunging to and fro.  She gazed in fear and amazement.

Then suddenly she switched on the light, and saw her son, in his green pyjamas, madly surging on the rocking-horse.  The blaze of light suddenly lit him up, as he urged the wooden horse, and lit her up, as she stood, blonde, in her dress of pale green and crystal, in the doorway.

"Paul ! "  she cried. "Whatever are you doing?"

"It's Malabar ! "  he screamed, in a powerful, strange voice.  "It's Malabar ! "

His eyes blazed at her for one strange and senseless second, as he ceased urging his wooden horse.  Then he fell with a crash to the ground, and she, all her tormented motherhood flooding upon her, rushed to gather him up.

But he was unconscious, and unconscious he remained, with some brain-fever.  He talked and tossed, and his mother sat stonily by his side.

"Malabar !   It's Malabar !   Bassett, Bassett, I know !   It's Malabar ! "

So the child cried, trying to get up and urge the rocking-horse that gave him his inspiration.

"What does he mean by Malabar?" asked the heart-frozen mother.

"I don't know," said the father stonily.

"What does he mean by Malabar?" she asked her brother Oscar.

"It's one of the horses running for the Derby," was the answer.

And, in spite of himself, Oscar Cresswell spoke to Basset, and himself put a thousand on Malabar:  at fourteen to one.

The third day of the illness was critical: they were waiting for a change.  The boy, with his rather long, curly hair, was tossing ceaselessly on the pillow.   He neither slept nor regained consciousness, and his eyes were like blue stones. His mother sat, feeling her heart had gone, turned actually into a stone.

In the evening, Oscar Cresswell did not come, but Bassett sent a message, saying could he come up for one moment, just one moment?  Paul's mother was very angry at the intrusion, but on second thought she agreed.  The boy was the same.  Perhaps Bassett might bring him to consciousness.

The gardener, a shortish fellow with a little brown moustache, and sharp little brown eyes, tiptoes into the room, touched his imaginary cap to Paul's mother, and stole to the bedside, staring with glittering, smallish eyes, at the tossing, dying child.

"Master Paul ! "   he whispered.  "Master Paul !   Malabar came in first all right, a clean win.  I did as you told me. You've made over seventy thousand pounds, you have; you've got over eighty thousand.  Malabar came in all right, Master Paul."

"Malabar !   Malabar !   Did I say Malabar, mother?  Did I say Malabar?  Do you think I'm lucky, mother?   I knew Malabar, didn't I?  Over eighty thousand pounds !   I call that lucky, don't you, mother?  Over eighty thousand pounds !   I knew, didn't I know I knew?  Malabar came in all right.  If I ride my horse till I'm sure, then I tell you, Bassett, you can go as high as you like.  Did you go for all you were worth, Bassett?"

I went a thousand on it, Master Paul."

"I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely sure --- oh, absolutely ! Mother, did I ever tell you?   I am lucky ! "

"No, you never did," said the mother.

But the boy died in the night.

And even as he lay dead, his mother heard her brother's voice saying to her:

"My God, Hester, you're eighty-thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad.  But, poor devil, poor devil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find a winner.

Notes：  D.H.  Lawrence ( 1885 - 1930 )  is a  world famous author and probably best known for his 1928 controversial book, Lady Chatterley's Lover . . .  which was banned at the time because of the sexual content.