最后一片叶子英文原文.docx

1、最后一片叶子英文原文最后一片叶子 英文原文In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called places. These places make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street.

2、 Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account! So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gable

3、s and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a colony. At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. Johnsy was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had

4、met at the table dhôte of an Eighth Street Delmonicos, and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted. That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one he

5、re and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown places. Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood

6、thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house. One morning the busy doctor invit

7、ed Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, grey eyebrow. She has one chance in - let us say, ten, he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia l

8、ook silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that shes not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind? She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day. said Sue. Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance? A man? said Sue, with a jews-harp twa

9、ng in her voice. Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind. Well, it is the weakness, then, said the doctor. I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I

10、subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten. After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to

11、a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsys room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime. Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep. She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a m

12、agazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature. As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound,

13、 several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside. Johnsys eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward. Twelve, she said, and little later eleven; and then ten, and nine; and then eight and seven, almost together. Sue look solicitously out of the windo

14、w. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its ske

15、leton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks. What is it, dear? asked Sue. Six, said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. Theyre falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now its easy. There goes another one. There are only five lef

16、t now. Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie. Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. Ive known that for three days. Didnt the doctor tell you? Oh, I never heard of such nonsense, complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And y

17、ou used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Dont be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - lets see exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, thats almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on th

18、e street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self. You neednt get any more wine, said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the win

19、dow. There goes another. No, I dont want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then Ill go, too. Johnsy, dear, said Sue, bending over her, will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand t

20、hose drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I would draw the shade down. Couldnt you draw in the other room? asked Johnsy, coldly. Id rather be here by you, said Sue. Beside, I dont want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves. Tell me as soon as you have finished, said Johnsy, closing

21、 her eyes, and lying white and still as fallen statue, because I want to see the last one fall. Im tired of waiting. Im tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves. Try to sleep, said Sue. I must call Behrman up

22、to be my model for the old hermit miner. Ill not be gone a minute. Dont try to move til I come back. Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelos Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behr

23、man was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistresss robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce

24、or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, a

25、nd who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above. Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receiv

26、e the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsys fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker. Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idi

27、otic imaginings. Vass! he cried. Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? A

28、ch, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy. She is very ill and weak, said Sue, and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you neednt. But I think you are a horrid old - old flibbertigibbet. You are just like a woman! yelled Be

29、hrman. Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes. Johnsy was sleeping when

30、they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in

31、 his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock. When Sue awoke from an hours sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade. Pull it up; I want to see, she ordered, in a whisper. Wearily Sue obeyed. But, lo!

32、 after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the ground. It is the last one, said Johnsy. I thought it would sur