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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
It Can't Happen Here
by Sinclair Lewis
Chapter 3
Doremus Jessup, editor and proprietor2 of the Daily Informer, the Bible of the conservative Vermont farmers up and down the Beulah Valley, was born in Fort Beulah in 1876, only son of an impecunious4 Universalist pastor5, the Reverend Loren Jessup. His mother was no less than a Bass6, of Massachusetts. The Reverend Loren, a bookish man and fond of flowers, merry but not noticeably witty7, used to chant “Alas8, alas, that a Bass of Mass should marry a minister prone9 to gas,” and he would insist that she was all wrong ichthyologically — she should have been a cod10, not a bass. There was in the parsonage little meat but plenty of books, not all theological by any means, so that before he was twelve Doremus knew the profane11 writings of Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, Tennyson, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Tolstoy, Balzac. He graduated from Isaiah College — once a bold Unitarian venture but by 1894 an inter-denominational outfit12 with nebulous trinitarian yearnings, a small and rustic13 stable of learning, in North Beulah, thirteen miles from “the Fort.”
But Isaiah College has come up in the world today — excepting educationally — for in 1931 it held the Dartmouth football team down to 64 to 6.
During college, Doremus wrote a great deal of bad poetry and became an incurable14 book addict15, but he was a fair track athlete. Naturally, he corresponded for papers in Boston and Springfield, and after graduation he was a reporter in Rutland and Worcester, with one glorious year in Boston, whose grimy beauty and shards16 of the past were to him what London would be to a young Yorkshireman. He was excited by concerts, art galleries, and bookshops; thrice a week he had a twenty-five-cent seat in the upper balcony of some theater; and for two months he roomed with a fellow reporter who had actually had a short story in The Century and who could talk about authors and technique like the very dickens. But Doremus was not particularly beefy or enduring, and the noise, the traffic, the bustle17 of assignments, exhausted18 him, and in 1901, three years after his graduation from college, when his widowed father died and left him $2980.00 and his library, Doremus went home to Fort Beulah and bought a quarter interest in the Informer, then a weekly.
By 1936 it was a daily, and he owned all of it . . . with a perceptible mortgage.
He was an equable and sympathetic boss; an imaginative news detective; he was, even in this ironbound Republican state, independent in politics; and in his editorials against graft19 and injustice20, though they were not fanatically chronic21, he could slash22 like a dog whip.
He was a third cousin of Calvin Coolidge, who had considered him sound domestically but loose politically. Doremus considered himself just the opposite.
He had married his wife, Emma, out of Fort Beulah. She was the daughter of a wagon23 manufacturer, a placid24, prettyish, broad-shouldered girl with whom he had gone to high school.
Now, in 1936, of their three children, Philip (Dartmouth, and Harvard Law School) was married and ambitiously practicing law in Worcester; Mary was the wife of Fowler Greenhill, M.D., of Fort Beulah, a gay and hustling25 medico, a choleric26 and red-headed young man, who was a wonder-worker in typhoid, acute appendicitis27, obstetrics, compound fractures, and diets for anemic children. Fowler and Mary had one son, Doremus’s only grandchild, the bonny David, who at eight was a timid, inventive, affectionate child with such mourning hound-dog eyes and such red-gold hair that his picture might well have been hung at a National Academy show or even been reproduced on the cover of a Women’s Magazine with 2,500,000 circulation. The Greenhills’ neighbors inevitably28 said of the boy, “My, Davy’s got such an imagination, hasn’t he! I guess he’ll be a Writer, just like his Grampa!”
Third of Doremus’s children was the gay, the pert, the dancing Cecilia, known as “Sissy,” aged29 eighteen, where her brother Philip was thirty-two and Mary, Mrs. Greenhill, turned thirty. She rejoiced the heart of Doremus by consenting to stay home while she was finishing high school, though she talked vigorously of going off to study architecture and “simply make MILLIONS, my dear,” by planning and erecting30 miraculous31 small homes.
Mrs. Jessup was lavishly32 (and quite erroneously) certain that her Philip was the spit and image of the Prince of Wales; Philip’s wife, Merilla (the fair daughter of Worcester, Massachusetts), curiously33 like the Princess Marina; that Mary would by any stranger be taken for Katharine Hepburn; that Sissy was a dryad and David a medieval page; and that Doremus (though she knew him better than she did those changelings, her children) amazingly resembled that naval34 hero, Winfield Scott Schley, as he looked in 1898.
She was a loyal woman, Emma Jessup, warmly generous, a cordon35 bleu at making lemon-meringue pie, a parochial Tory, an orthodox Episcopalian, and completely innocent of any humor. Doremus was perpetually tickled36 by her kind solemnity, and it was to be chalked down to him as a singular act of grace that he refrained from pretending that he had become a working Communist and was thinking of leaving for Moscow immediately.
Doremus looked depressed38, looked old, when he lifted himself, as from an invalid’s chair, out of the Chrysler, in his hideous39 garage of cement and galvanized iron. (But it was a proud two-car garage; besides the four-year-old Chrysler, they had a new Ford40 convertible41 coupe, which Doremus hoped to drive some day when Sissy wasn’t using it.)
He cursed competently as, on the cement walk from the garage to the kitchen, he barked his shins on the lawn-mower, left there by his hired man, one Oscar Ledue, known always as “Shad,” a large and red-faced, a sulky and surly Irish–Canuck peasant. Shad always did things like leaving lawnmowers about to snap at the shins of decent people. He was entirely42 incompetent43 and vicious. He never edged-up the flower beds, he kept his stinking44 old cap on his head when he brought in logs for the fireplace, he did not scythe45 the dandelions in the meadow till they had gone to seed, he delighted in failing to tell cook that the peas were now ripe, and he was given to shooting cats, stray dogs, chipmunks46, and honey-voiced blackbirds. At least twice a day, Doremus resolved to fire him, but — Perhaps he was telling himself the truth when he insisted that it was amusing to try to civilize47 this prize bull.
Doremus trotted48 into the kitchen, decided49 that he did not want some cold chicken and a glass of milk from the ice-box, nor even a wedge of the celebrated50 cocoanut layer cake made by their cook-general, Mrs. Candy, and mounted to his “study,” on the third, the attic51 floor.
His house was an ample, white, clapboarded structure of the vintage of 1880, a square bulk with a mansard roof and, in front, a long porch with insignificant52 square white pillars. Doremus declared that the house was ugly, “but ugly in a nice way.”
His study, up there, was his one perfect refuge from annoyances53 and bustle. It was the only room in the house that Mrs. Candy (quiet, grimly competent, thoroughly54 literate55, once a Vermont country schoolteacher) was never allowed to clean. It was an endearing mess of novels, copies of the Congressional Record, of the New Yorker, Time, Nation, New Republic, New Masses, and Speculum (cloistral organ of the Medieval Society), treatises56 on taxation57 and monetary58 systems, road maps, volumes on exploration in Abyssinia and the Antarctic, chewed stubs of pencils, a shaky portable typewriter, fishing tackle, rumpled59 carbon paper, two comfortable old leather chairs, a Windsor chair at his desk, the complete works of Thomas Jefferson, his chief hero, a microscope and a collection of Vermont butterflies, Indian arrowheads, exiguous60 volumes of Vermont village poetry printed in local newspaper offices, the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, Science and Health, Selections from the Mahabharata, the poetry of Sandburg, Frost, Masters, Jeffers, Ogden Nash, Edgar Guest, Omar Khayyam, and Milton, a shotgun and a .22 repeating rifle, an Isaiah College banner, faded, the complete Oxford61 Dictionary, five fountain pens of which two would work, a vase from Crete dating from 327 B.C.— very ugly — the World Almanac for year before last, with the cover suggesting that it had been chewed by a dog, odd pairs of horn-rimmed spectacles and of rimless62 eyeglasses, none of which now suited his eyes, a fine, reputedly Tudor oak cabinet from Devonshire, portraits of Ethan Allen and Thaddeus Stevens, rubber wading-boots, senile red morocco slippers63, a poster issued by the Vermont Mercury at Woodstock, on September 2, 1840, announcing a glorious Whig victory, twenty-four boxes of safety matches one by one stolen from the kitchen, assorted64 yellow scratch pads, seven books on Russia and Bolshevism — extraordinarily65 pro1 or extraordinarily con3 — a signed photograph of Theodore Roosevelt, six cigarette cartons, all half empty (according to the tradition of journalistic eccentrics, Doremus should have smoked a Good Old Pipe, but he detested66 the slimy ooze67 of nicotine-soaked spittle), a rag carpet on the floor, a withered68 sprig of holly69 with a silver Christmas ribbon, a case of seven unused genuine Sheffield razors, dictionaries in French, German, Italian and Spanish — the first of which languages he really could read — a canary in a Bavarian gilded70 wicker cage, a worn linen-bound copy of Old Hearthside Songs for Home and Picnic whose selections he was wont71 to croon, holding the book on his knee, and an old cast-iron Franklin stove. Everything, indeed, that was proper for a hermit72 and improper73 for impious domestic hands.
Before switching on the light he squinted75 through a dormer window at the bulk of mountains cutting the welter of stars. In the center were the last lights of Fort Beulah, far below, and on the left, unseen, the soft meadows, the old farmhouses76, the great dairy barns of the Ethan Mowing77. It was a kind country, cool and clear as a shaft78 of light and, he meditated79, he loved it more every quiet year of his freedom from city towers and city clamor.
One of the few times when Mrs. Candy, their housekeeper80, was permitted to enter his hermit’s cell was to leave there, on the long table, his mail. He picked it up and started to read briskly, standing81 by the table. (Time to go to bed! Too much chatter82 and bellyaching, this evening! Good Lord! Past midnight!) He sighed then, and sat in his Windsor chair, leaning his elbows on the table and studiously reading the first letter over again.
It was from Victor Loveland, one of the younger, more international-minded teachers in Doremus’s old school, Isaiah College.
DEAR DR. JESSUP:
(“Hm. ‘Dr. Jessup.’ Not me, m’ lad. The only honorary degree I’ll ever get’ll be Master in Veterinary Surgery or Laureate in Embalming83.”)
A very dangerous situation has arisen here at Isaiah and those of us who are trying to advocate something like integrity and modernity are seriously worried — not, probably, that we need to be long, as we shall probably all get fired. Where two years ago most of our students just laughed at any idea of military drilling, they have gone warlike in a big way, with undergrads drilling with rifles, machine guns, and cute little blueprints84 of tanks and planes all over the place. Two of them, voluntarily, are going down to Rutland every week to take training in flying, avowedly85 to get ready for wartime aviation. When I cautiously ask them what the dickens war they are preparing for they just scratch and indicate they don’t care much, so long as they can get a chance to show what virile86 proud gents they are.
Well, we’ve got used to that. But just this afternoon — the newspapers haven’t got this yet — the Board of Trustees, including Mr. Francis Tasbrough and our president, Dr. Owen Peaseley, met and voted a resolution that — now listen to this, will you, Dr. Jessup — “Any member of the faculty87 or student body of Isaiah who shall in any way, publicly or privately88, in print, writing, or by the spoken word, adversely89 criticize military training at or by Isaiah College, or in any other institution of learning in the United States, or by the state militias90, federal forces, or other officially recognized military organizations in this country, shall be liable to immediate37 dismissal from this college, and any student who shall, with full and proper proof, bring to the attention of the President or any Trustee of the college such malign91 criticism by any person whatever connected in any way with the institution shall receive extra credits in his course in military training, such credits to apply to the number of credits necessary for graduation.”
What can we do with such fast exploding Fascism?
VICTOR LOVELAND.
And Loveland, teacher of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit (two lone92 students) had never till now meddled93 in any politics of more recent date than A.D. 180.
“So Frank was there at Trustees’ meeting, and didn’t dare tell me,” Doremus sighed. “Encouraging them to become spies. Gestapo. Oh, my dear Frank, this a serious time! You, my good bonehead, for once you said it! President Owen J. Peaseley, the bagged-faced, pious74, racketeering, damned hedge-schoolmaster! But what can I do? Oh — write another editorial viewing-with-alarm, I suppose!”
He plumped into a deep chair and sat fidgeting, like a bright-eyed, apprehensive94 little bird.
On the door was a tearing sound, imperious, demanding.
He opened to admit Foolish, the family dog. Foolish was a reliable combination of English setter, Airedale, cocker spaniel, wistful doe, and rearing hyena95. He gave one abrupt96 snort of welcome and nuzzled his brown satin head against Doremus’s knee. His bark awakened97 the canary, under the absurd old blue sweater that covered its cage, and it automatically caroled that it was noon, summer noon, among the pear trees in the green Harz hills, none of which was true. But the bird’s trilling, the dependable presence of Foolish, comforted Doremus, made military drill and belching politicians seem unimportant, and in security he dropped asleep in the worn brown leather chair
点击收听单词发音
1 pro | |
n.赞成,赞成的意见,赞成者 | |
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2 proprietor | |
n.所有人;业主;经营者 | |
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3 con | |
n.反对的观点,反对者,反对票,肺病;vt.精读,学习,默记;adv.反对地,从反面;adj.欺诈的 | |
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4 impecunious | |
adj.不名一文的,贫穷的 | |
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5 pastor | |
n.牧师,牧人 | |
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6 bass | |
n.男低音(歌手);低音乐器;低音大提琴 | |
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7 witty | |
adj.机智的,风趣的 | |
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8 alas | |
int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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9 prone | |
adj.(to)易于…的,很可能…的;俯卧的 | |
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10 cod | |
n.鳕鱼;v.愚弄;哄骗 | |
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11 profane | |
adj.亵神的,亵渎的;vt.亵渎,玷污 | |
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12 outfit | |
n.(为特殊用途的)全套装备,全套服装 | |
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13 rustic | |
adj.乡村的,有乡村特色的;n.乡下人,乡巴佬 | |
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14 incurable | |
adj.不能医治的,不能矫正的,无救的;n.不治的病人,无救的人 | |
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15 addict | |
v.使沉溺;使上瘾;n.沉溺于不良嗜好的人 | |
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16 shards | |
n.(玻璃、金属或其他硬物的)尖利的碎片( shard的名词复数 ) | |
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17 bustle | |
v.喧扰地忙乱,匆忙,奔忙;n.忙碌;喧闹 | |
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18 exhausted | |
adj.极其疲惫的,精疲力尽的 | |
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19 graft | |
n.移植,嫁接,艰苦工作,贪污;v.移植,嫁接 | |
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20 injustice | |
n.非正义,不公正,不公平,侵犯(别人的)权利 | |
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21 chronic | |
adj.(疾病)长期未愈的,慢性的;极坏的 | |
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22 slash | |
vi.大幅度削减;vt.猛砍,尖锐抨击,大幅减少;n.猛砍,斜线,长切口,衣衩 | |
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23 wagon | |
n.四轮马车,手推车,面包车;无盖运货列车 | |
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24 placid | |
adj.安静的,平和的 | |
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25 hustling | |
催促(hustle的现在分词形式) | |
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26 choleric | |
adj.易怒的,性情暴躁的 | |
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27 appendicitis | |
n.阑尾炎,盲肠炎 | |
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28 inevitably | |
adv.不可避免地;必然发生地 | |
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29 aged | |
adj.年老的,陈年的 | |
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30 erecting | |
v.使直立,竖起( erect的现在分词 );建立 | |
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31 miraculous | |
adj.像奇迹一样的,不可思议的 | |
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32 lavishly | |
adv.慷慨地,大方地 | |
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33 curiously | |
adv.有求知欲地;好问地;奇特地 | |
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34 naval | |
adj.海军的,军舰的,船的 | |
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35 cordon | |
n.警戒线,哨兵线 | |
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36 tickled | |
(使)发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 ); (使)愉快,逗乐 | |
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37 immediate | |
adj.立即的;直接的,最接近的;紧靠的 | |
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38 depressed | |
adj.沮丧的,抑郁的,不景气的,萧条的 | |
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39 hideous | |
adj.丑陋的,可憎的,可怕的,恐怖的 | |
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40 Ford | |
n.浅滩,水浅可涉处;v.涉水,涉过 | |
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41 convertible | |
adj.可改变的,可交换,同意义的;n.有活动摺篷的汽车 | |
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42 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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43 incompetent | |
adj.无能力的,不能胜任的 | |
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44 stinking | |
adj.臭的,烂醉的,讨厌的v.散发出恶臭( stink的现在分词 );发臭味;名声臭;糟透 | |
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45 scythe | |
n. 长柄的大镰刀,战车镰; v. 以大镰刀割 | |
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46 chipmunks | |
n.金花鼠( chipmunk的名词复数 ) | |
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47 civilize | |
vt.使文明,使开化 (=civilise) | |
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48 trotted | |
小跑,急走( trot的过去分词 ); 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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49 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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50 celebrated | |
adj.有名的,声誉卓著的 | |
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51 attic | |
n.顶楼,屋顶室 | |
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52 insignificant | |
adj.无关紧要的,可忽略的,无意义的 | |
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53 annoyances | |
n.恼怒( annoyance的名词复数 );烦恼;打扰;使人烦恼的事 | |
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54 thoroughly | |
adv.完全地,彻底地,十足地 | |
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55 literate | |
n.学者;adj.精通文学的,受过教育的 | |
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56 treatises | |
n.专题著作,专题论文,专著( treatise的名词复数 ) | |
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57 taxation | |
n.征税,税收,税金 | |
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58 monetary | |
adj.货币的,钱的;通货的;金融的;财政的 | |
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59 rumpled | |
v.弄皱,使凌乱( rumple的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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60 exiguous | |
adj.不足的,太少的 | |
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61 Oxford | |
n.牛津(英国城市) | |
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62 rimless | |
adj.无边的 | |
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63 slippers | |
n. 拖鞋 | |
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64 assorted | |
adj.各种各样的,各色俱备的 | |
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65 extraordinarily | |
adv.格外地;极端地 | |
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66 detested | |
v.憎恶,嫌恶,痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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67 ooze | |
n.软泥,渗出物;vi.渗出,泄漏;vt.慢慢渗出,流露 | |
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68 withered | |
adj. 枯萎的,干瘪的,(人身体的部分器官)因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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69 holly | |
n.[植]冬青属灌木 | |
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70 gilded | |
a.镀金的,富有的 | |
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71 wont | |
adj.习惯于;v.习惯;n.习惯 | |
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72 hermit | |
n.隐士,修道者;隐居 | |
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73 improper | |
adj.不适当的,不合适的,不正确的,不合礼仪的 | |
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74 pious | |
adj.虔诚的;道貌岸然的 | |
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75 squinted | |
斜视( squint的过去式和过去分词 ); 眯着眼睛; 瞟; 从小孔或缝隙里看 | |
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76 farmhouses | |
n.农舍,农场的主要住房( farmhouse的名词复数 ) | |
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77 mowing | |
n.割草,一次收割量,牧草地v.刈,割( mow的现在分词 ) | |
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78 shaft | |
n.(工具的)柄,杆状物 | |
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79 meditated | |
深思,沉思,冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 ); 内心策划,考虑 | |
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80 housekeeper | |
n.管理家务的主妇,女管家 | |
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81 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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82 chatter | |
vi./n.喋喋不休;短促尖叫;(牙齿)打战 | |
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83 embalming | |
v.保存(尸体)不腐( embalm的现在分词 );使不被遗忘;使充满香气 | |
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84 blueprints | |
n.蓝图,设计图( blueprint的名词复数 ) | |
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85 avowedly | |
adv.公然地 | |
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86 virile | |
adj.男性的;有男性生殖力的;有男子气概的;强有力的 | |
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87 faculty | |
n.才能;学院,系;(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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88 privately | |
adv.以私人的身份,悄悄地,私下地 | |
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89 adversely | |
ad.有害地 | |
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90 militias | |
n.民兵组织,民兵( militia的名词复数 ) | |
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91 malign | |
adj.有害的;恶性的;恶意的;v.诽谤,诬蔑 | |
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92 lone | |
adj.孤寂的,单独的;唯一的 | |
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93 meddled | |
v.干涉,干预(他人事务)( meddle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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94 apprehensive | |
adj.担心的,恐惧的,善于领会的 | |
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95 hyena | |
n.土狼,鬣狗 | |
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96 abrupt | |
adj.突然的,意外的;唐突的,鲁莽的 | |
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97 awakened | |
v.(使)醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 );(使)觉醒;弄醒;(使)意识到 | |
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