首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Impressions of America San Francisco is a really beautiful city. China Town, peopled by Chinese labourers, is the most artis
Impressions of America San Francisco is a really beautiful city. China Town, peopled by Chinese labourers, is the most artis
admin
2010-05-26
94
问题
Impressions of America
San Francisco is a really beautiful city. China Town, peopled by Chinese labourers, is the most artistic town I have ever come across. The people -- strange, melancholy Orientals, whom many people would call common, and they are certainly very poor -- have determined that they will have nothing about them that is not beautiful. In the Chinese restaurant, where these navvies (劳工) meet to have supper in the evening, I found them drinking tea out of china cups as delicate as the petals of a rose-leaf, whereas at the gaudy(俗丽的) hotels I was supplied with a delf cup an inch and a half thick. When the Chinese bill was presented it was made out on rice paper, the account being done in Indian ink as fantastically as if an artist had been etching little birds on a fan.
Salt Lake City contains only two buildings of note, the chief being the Tabernacle, which is in the shape of a soup-kettle. It is decorated by the only native artist, and he has treated religious subjects in the naive spirit of the early Florentine painters, representing people of our own day in the dress of the period side by side with people of Biblical history who are clothed in some romantic costume.
The building next in importance is called the Amelia Palace, in honor of one of Brigham Young’s wives. When he died the present president of the Mormons stood up in the Tabernacle and said that it had been revealed to him that he was to have the Amelia Palace, and that on this subject there were to be no more revelations of any kind.
From Salt Lake City one travels over the great plains of Colorado and up the Rocky Mountains, on the top of which is Leadville, the richest city in the world. It had also got the reputation of being the roughest, and every man carries a revolver. I was told that if I went there they would be sure to shoot me or my traveling manager. I wrote and told them that nothing that they could do to my traveling manager would intimidate me. They are miners - men working in metals, so I lectured to them on the Ethics of Art. I read them passages from the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and they seemed much delighted. I was reproved by my hearers for not having brought him with me I explained that he had been dead for some little time which elicited the enquiry "Who shot him"? They afterwards took me to a dancing saloon where I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed notice:
PLEASE DO NOT SHOOT THE PIANIST.
HE IS DOING HIS BEST.
The mortality among pianists in that place is marvelous. Then they asked me to supper, and having accepted, I had to descend a mine in a rickety bucket in which it was impossible to be graceful. Having got into the heart of the mountain I had supper, the first course being whisky, the second whisky and the third whisky.
I went to the Theatre to lecture and I was informed that just before I went there two men had been seized for committing a murder, and in that theatre they had been brought on to the stage at eight o’clock in the evening, and then and there tried and executed before a crowded audience. But I found these miners very charming and not at all rough.
Among the more elderly inhabitants of the South I found a melancholy tendency to date every event of importance by the late war. "How beautiful the moon is tonight," I once remarked to a gentleman who was standing next to me. "Yes," was his reply, "but you should have seen it before the war."
So infinitesimal did I find the knowledge of Art, west of the Rocky Mountains, that an art patron(赞助人)--one who in his day had been a miner -- actually sued the railroad company for damages because the plaster cast of Venus of Milo, which he had imported from Paris, had been delivered minus the arms. And, what is more surprising still, he gained his case and the damages. Pennsylvania, with its rocky gorges and woodland scenery, reminded me of Switzerland. The prairie reminded me of a piece of blotting-paper.
The Spanish and French have left behind them memorials in the beauty of their names. All the cities that have beautiful names derive them from the Spanish or the French. The English people give intensely ugly names to places. One place has such an ugly name that I refused to lecture there. It was called Grigsville. Supposing I had founded a school of Art there -- fancy "Early Grigsville". Imagine a School of Art teaching "Grigsville Renaissance(文艺复兴)".
As for slang I did not hear much of it, though a young lady who had changed her clothes after an afternoon dance did say that "after the heel kick she shifted her day goods".
American youths are pale and precocious(早熟), or sallow and supercilious, but American girls ate pretty and charming -- little oases of pretty unreasonableness in a vast desert of practical common-sense.
Every American girl is entitled to have twelve young men devoted to her. They remain her slaves and she rules them with charming nonchalance (无动于衷).
The men are entirely given to business; they have, as they say, their brains in front of their heads. They are also exceedingly receptive of new ideas. Their education is practical. We base the education of children entirely on books, but we much give a child a mind before we can instruct the mind. Children have a natural antipathy to books -- handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.
In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment of civilization. There at any rate is a country that had no trappings, no pageants and no gorgeous ceremonies. I saw only two processions -- one was the Fire Brigade preceded by the Police, the other was the Police preceded by the Fire Brigade.
Every man when he gets to the age of twenty-one is allowed a vote, and thereby immediately acquires his political education. The Americans are the best politically educated people in the world. It is well worth one’s while to go to a country which can teach us the beauty of the word FREEDOM and the value of the thing LIBERTY.
American girls are little oases of pretty unreasonableness in a vast desert of
选项
答案
practical common-sense
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/wwV7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Ifyouweretobeginanewjobtomorrow,youwouldbringwithyousomebasicstrengthsandweaknesses.Successorfailureinyou
ResearchersinJapanhavediscoveredsomeeye-openingnewsaboutcoffee:Itmayhelp【S1】______themostcommontypeofliverca
ResearchersinJapanhavediscoveredsomeeye-openingnewsaboutcoffee:Itmayhelp【S1】______themostcommontypeofliverca
ResearchersinJapanhavediscoveredsomeeye-openingnewsaboutcoffee:Itmayhelp【S1】______themostcommontypeofliverca
Peopleinallpartsoftheworldare【B1】______."NoTobaccoDay".ItisthedaywhentheWorldHealthOrganizationappeals
Thestandardoflivingofanycountrymeanstheaverageperson’sshareofthegoodsandserviceswhichthecountryproduces.Ac
Whatishappiness?WeAmericansbelievethattherightto【C1】______happinessisissuedtouswiththebirth【C2】______,butn
TheEarlyHistoryofHarvardUniversityHarvardUniversity,whichcelebratedits350thanniversaryin1986,istheoldesti
Oneofthemostimportantfeaturesthatdistinguishesreadingfromlisteningisthenatureoftheaudience.【C1】______thewrite
TheFatheroftheWorldWideWebTimBerners-Lee,whoreceivedonemillioneuros($1.2million)cashprizeforcreatingthe
随机试题
以下不属于MIS报表的内容的是()
牙列缺失后,牙槽骨的吸收()
患者,女,35岁,已婚。患子宫肌瘤2年,精神抑郁,经前乳房胀痛,胸胁胀闷,心烦易怒,小腹胀痛,时有刺痛,舌边有瘀点苔白,脉细弦。治疗应首选
A.阴阳平衡失调B.血液循行迟缓C.血液运行停滞D.津液输布排泄障碍E.津液亏虚不能润养痰饮的病机是
假设某一时刻股票指数为2280点,投资者以15点的价格买入一手股指看涨期权合约并持有到期,行权价格是2300点,若到期时标的指数价格为2310点,则在不考虑交易费用、行权费用的情况下,投资者收益为()。
在查处某国有企业老总受贿案中,政府认为会导致工人下岗。你是案件主办人,你怎么做?
根据“十一五”规划,试说明如何建设社会主义新农村。
A、 B、 C、 D、 D本题的关键在于把小方块分成外围和中间两个部分,圆圈在外围变化,线段的端点在中间方格中变化。圆圈每次逆时针移动2格,线条的端点在中间的四个方格中每次顺时针移动1格。故本题答案D。
疟疾热寄生虫的血红细胞在120天后被排除出人体。由于这种寄生虫无法转移到新一代的血红细胞内,在一个人迁移到一个没有疟疾的地区120天后,发生在这个人身上的任何发烧情况都不是由疟疾热寄生虫引起的。以下哪一项如果正确,将最严重地削弱以上的结论?
设P(A)=0.6,P(B)=0.5,P(A—B)=0.4,则P(B—A)=________,P(A+B)=________.
最新回复
(
0
)