1. Boy and man, I had been through it often before.
As a boy and later when I was a grown-up man, I had often traveled through the region
2. Here … heart of industrial America, the center of its most lucrative and characteristic activity, the boast and pride of the richest and greatest nation ever seen on earth—
Here was the center of the most profitable and characteristic American activity –industrial activity.
3. and here was a scene so dreadfully hideous,…… to a macabre and depressing joke.
The scene that met the eye was terribly ugly and the whole region was so miserable and gloomy that it was unbearable. This dreadful scene makes all human endeavors to advance and improve their fate appear as a ghastly, saddening joke.
4. What I allude to is the unbroken and agonizing ugliness, the sheer revolting monstrousness, of every house in sight.
sheer revolting monstrousness: the absolute disgusting hideousness.
5. one blinked before them as one … a man with his face shot away.
a simile. The ugliness of these houses was as gruesome as a face that has been shot and mangled.
6. A few linger in memory, horrible even there.
Some of the houses remain in one’s memory and later when one pictures them in one’s mind they still appear to be horrible.
7. The country itself is not uncomely
The country itself is pleasant to look at.
8.It is thickly settled …
--- in this area a great number of people live closely together, but it doesn’t give the impression of being overcrowded.
9. …there are very few solid blocks.
solid block: a group of buildings with no breaks or empty space separating them.
Even in the larger towns there are very few solid blocks of houses, so there are still many empty spaces on which new buildings can be put up.
10. If there were architects of any ….
If there had been such architects they would naturally have built Swiss-type houses which would lie low and clinging to the hillsides.
11. And one and all they are streaked in grime, with dead and eczematous patches of paint peeing through the streaks.
All the house here are covered with dirt, and some paint which is not covered up by the dirt looks like dried-up scales formed on the skin by eczema.
12. When it has taken on the patina of the mills it is the color of an egg long past all hope or caring.
When the brick is covered with black soot of the mills it takes on the color of a rotten egg.
13. Red brick, even in a steel town, ages with some dignity.
Red brick, even in a steel town, looks quite respectable with the passing of time.
Even in a steel town, old red bricks still appear pleasing to the eye.
14. I award this championship only after laborious research and incessant prayer.
I came to the conclusion that Westmorland had the most loathsome towns and villages only after visiting and comparing many places.
15. They are incomparable in color, and they are incomparable in design.
People cannot find such terrible color and design in any other region.
16. It is as if some titanic and aberrant genius, uncompromisingly inimical to man, had devoted all the ingenuity of Hell to the making of them.
It is as some genius of great power, who didn’t like to do the right things and who was an inflexible enemy of man, employed all the cleverness and skill of hell to build these ugly houses.
17. They show grotesqueries of ugliness that, in retrospect, become almost diabolical.
They show such fantastic and bizarre ugliness that, in looking back, they become almost fiendish and wicked.
18. Are they so frightful because the valley is full of foreigners—dull, insensate brutes, with no love of beauty in them?
Are the houses so frightfully ugly because the valley is inhabited by a lot of foreigners who are stupid and unfeeling like animals and who have no love of beauty in them?
19. —save perhaps in the more putrid parts of England.
putrid: decomposing; rotten and foul-smelling
you won’t find any abominable houses in Europe, except in some rotten and decaying areas in England.
