下载文档原格式
老来乐Delights in Growing Old六十整岁望七十岁如攀高山。
不料七十岁居然过了。
又想八十岁是难于上青天，可望不可即了。
岂知八十岁又过了。
老汉今年八十二矣。
这是照传统算法，务虚不务实。
现在不是提倡尊重传统吗?At the age of sixty I longed for a life span of seventy, a goal as difficult as a summit to be reached. Who would expect that I had reached it? Then I dreamed of living to be eighty, a target in sight but as inaccessible as Heaven. Out of my anticipation, I had hit it. As a matter of fact, I am now an old man of eighty-two. Such longevity is a grant bestowed by Nature; though nominal and not real, yet it conforms to our tradition. Is it not advocated to pay respect to nowadays?老年多半能悟道。
孔子说“天下有道”。
老子说“道可道”。
《圣经》说“太初有道”。
佛教说“邪魔外道”。
我老了，不免胡思乱想，胡说八道，自觉悟出一条真理: 老年是广阔天地，是可以大有作为的。
An old man is said to understand the Way most probably: the Way of good administration as put forth by Confucius, the Way that can be explained as suggested by Laotzu, the Word (Way) in the very beginning as written in the Bible and the Way of pagans as denounced by theBuddhists. As I am growing old, I can't help being given to flights of fancy and having my own Way of creating stories. However I have come to realize the truth: my old age serves as a vast world in which I can still have my talents employed fully and developed completely.七十岁开始可以诸事不做而拿退休金，不愁没有一碗饭吃，自由自在，自得其乐。
Are We There Yet?America’s recovery will be much slower than that from most recessions; but the government can help a bit.“WHITHER goest thou, America?” That question, posed by Jack Kerouac on behalf of the Beat generation half a century ago, is the biggest uncertainty hanging over the world economy. And it reflects the foremost worry for American voters, who go to the polls for the congressional mid-term elections on November 2nd with the country’s unemployment rate stubbornly stuck at nearly one in ten. They should prepare themselves for a long, hard ride.The most wrenching recession since the 1930s ended a year ago. But the recovery—none too powerful to begin with—slowed sharply earlier this year. GDP grew by a feeble 1.6% at an annual pace in the second quarter, and seems to have been stuck somewhere similar since. The housing market slumped after temporary tax incentives to buy a home expired. So few private jobs were being created that unemployment looked more likely to rise than fall. Fears grew over the summer that if this deceleration continued, America’s economy would slip back into recession.Fortunately, those worries now seem exaggerated. Part of the weakness of second-quarter GDP was probably because of a temporary surge in imports from China. The latest statistics, from reasonably good retail sales in August to falling claims for unemployment benefits, point to an economy that, though still weak, is not slumping further. And history suggests that although nascent recoveries often wobble for a quarter or two, they rarely relapse into recession. For now, it is most likely that America’s economy will crawl along with growth at perhaps 2.5%: above stall speed, but far too slow to make much difference to the jobless rate.Why, given that America usually rebounds from recession, are the prospects so bleak? That’s because most past recessions have been caused by tight monetary policy. When policy is loosened, demand rebounds. This recession was the result of a financial crisis. Recoveries after financial crises are normally weak and slow as banking systems are repaired and balance-sheets rebuilt. Typically, this period of debt reduction lasts around seven years, which means America would emerge from it in 2014. By some measures, households are reducing their debt burdens unusually fast, but even optimistic seers do not think the process is much more than half over.Battling on the busAmerica’s biggest problem is that its politician s have yet to acknowledge that the economy is in for such a long, slow haul, let alone prepare for the consequences. A few brave officials are beginning to sound warnings that the jobless rate is likely to “stay high”. But the political debate is more abou t assigning blame for the recession than about suggesting imaginative ways to give more oomph to the recovery.Republicans argue that Barack Obama’s shift towards “big government” explains the economy’s weakness, and that high unemployment is proof that fiscal stimulus was a bad idea. In fact, most of the growth in government to date has been temporary and unavoidable; the longer-run growth in government is more modest, and reflects the policies of both Mr Obama and his predecessor. And the notion that hig h joblessness “proves” that stimulus failed is simply wrong. The mechanics of a financial bust suggest that without a fiscal boost the recession would have been much worse. Democrats have their own class-warfare version of the blame game, in which Wall Str eet’s excesses caused the problem and higher taxes on high-earners are part of the solution. That is why Mr. Obama’s legislative priority before the mid-terms is to ensure thatthe Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year for households earning more than $250,000 but are extended for everyone else. This takes an unnecessary risk with the short-term recovery. America’s experience in 1937 and Japan’s in 1997 are powerful evidence that ill-timed tax rises can tip weak economies back into recession. Higher taxes at the top, along with the waning of fiscal stimulus and belt-tightening by the states, will make a weak growth rate weaker still. Less noticed is that Mr. Obama’s fiscal plan will also worsen the medium-term budget mess, by making tax cuts for the middle class permanent.Ways to overhaul the engineIn an ideal world America would commit itself now to the medium-term tax reforms and spending cuts needed to get a grip on the budget, while leaving room to keep fiscal policy loose for the moment. But in febrile, partisan Washington that is a pipe-dream. Today’s goals can only be more modest: to nurture the weak economy, minimize uncertainty and prepare the ground for tomorrow’s fiscal debate. To that end, Congress ought to extend all the Bush tax cuts until 2013. Then they should all expire—prompting a serious fiscal overhaul, at a time when the economy is stronger.A broader set of policies could help to work off the hangover faster. One priority is to encourage more write-downs of mortgage debt. Almost a quarter of all Americans with mortgages owe more than their houses are worth. Until that changes the vicious cycle of rising foreclosures and falling prices will continue. There are plenty of ideas on offer, from changing the bankruptcy law so that judges can restructure mortgage debt to empowering special trustees to write down loans. They all have drawbacks, but a fetid pool of underwater mortgages will, much like Japan’s loans to zombie firms, corrode the financial system and harm the recoverCleaning up the housing market would help cut America’s unemployment rate, by making it easier for people to move to where jobs are. But more must be done to stop high joblessness becoming entrenched. Payroll-tax cuts and credits to reduce the cost of hiring would help. (The health-care reform, alas, does the opposite, at least for small businesses.) Politicians will also have to think harder about training schemes, because some workers lack the skills that new jobs require.Americans are used to great distances. The sooner they, and their politicians, accept that the road to recovery will be a long one, the faster they will get there.。
历届韩素音翻译大奖赛竞赛原文及译文历届韩素音翻译大奖赛竞赛原文及译文英译汉部分 (3)Hidden within Technology‘s Empire, a Republic of Letters (3)隐藏于技术帝国的文学界 (3)"Why Measure Life in Heartbeats?" (8)何必以心跳定生死？ (9)美(节选) (11)The Literature of Knowledge and the Literature of Power byThomas De Quincey (16)知识文学与力量文学托马斯.昆西 (16)An Experience of Aesthetics by Robert Ginsberg (18)审美的体验罗伯特.金斯伯格 (18)A Person Who Apologizes Has the Moral Ball in His Court by Paul Johnson (21)谁给别人道歉，谁就在道义上掌握了主动保罗.约翰逊 (21)On Going Home by Joan Didion (25)回家琼.狄迪恩 (25)The Making of Ashenden (Excerpt) by Stanley Elkin (28)艾兴登其人（节选）斯坦利.埃尔金 (28)Beyond Life (34)超越生命[美] 卡贝尔著 (34)Envy by Samuel Johnson (39)论嫉妒[英]塞缪尔.约翰逊著 (39)《中国翻译》第一届“青年有奖翻译比赛”（1986）竞赛原文及参考译文（英译汉） (41)Sunday (41)星期天 (42)四川外语学院“语言桥杯”翻译大赛获奖译文选登 (44)第七届“语言桥杯”翻译大赛获奖译文选登 (44)The Woods: A Meditation (Excerpt) (46)林间心语（节选） (47)第六届“语言桥杯”翻译大赛获奖译文选登 (50)第五届“语言桥杯”翻译大赛原文及获奖译文选登 (52)第四届“语言桥杯”翻译大赛原文、参考译文及获奖译文选登 (54) When the Sun Stood Still (54)永恒夏日 (55)CASIO杯翻译竞赛原文及参考译文 (56)第三届竞赛原文及参考译文 (56)Here Is New York (excerpt) (56)这儿是纽约 (58)第四届翻译竞赛原文及参考译文 (61)Reservoir Frogs (Or Places Called Mama's) (61)水库青蛙（又题：妈妈餐馆） (62)中译英部分 (66)蜗居在巷陌的寻常幸福 (66)Simple Happiness of Dwelling in the Back Streets (66)在义与利之外 (69)Beyond Righteousness and Interests (69)读书苦乐杨绛 (72)The Bitter-Sweetness of Reading Yang Jiang (72)想起清华种种王佐良 (74)Reminiscences of Tsinghua Wang Zuoliang (74)歌德之人生启示宗白华 (76)What Goethe's Life Reveals by Zong Baihua (76)怀想那片青草地赵红波 (79)Yearning for That Piece of Green Meadow by Zhao Hongbo (79)可爱的南京 (82)Nanjing the Beloved City (82)霞冰心 (84)The Rosy Cloud byBingxin (84)黎明前的北平 (85)Predawn Peiping (85)老来乐金克木 (86)Delights in Growing Old by Jin Kemu (86)可贵的“他人意识” (89)Calling for an Awareness of Others (89)教孩子相信 (92)To Implant In Our Children‘s Young Hearts An Undying Faith In Humanity (92)心中有爱 (94)Love in Heart (94)英译汉部分Hidden within Technology’s Empire, a Republic of Le tters 隐藏于技术帝国的文学界索尔·贝娄（1）When I was a boy ―discovering literature‖, I used to think how wonderful it would be if every other person on the street were familiar with Proust and Joyce or T. E. Lawrence or Pasternak and Kafka. Later I learned how refractory to high culture the democratic masses were. Lincoln as a young frontiersman read Plutarch, Shakespeare and the Bible. But then he was Lincoln.我还是个“探索文学”的少年时，就经常在想：要是大街上人人都熟悉普鲁斯特和乔伊斯，熟悉T.E.劳伦斯，熟悉帕斯捷尔纳克和卡夫卡，该有多好啊！后来才知道，平民百姓对高雅文化有多排斥。
2020年第四届世界中医英语翻译大赛原文第四届世界中医英语翻译大赛原文：,中医健康观,木山,[1] 关于影响人类健康的因素，现代医学认为主要有生物遗传、生活环境、行为方式和医疗条件四大方面。
世界卫生组织对“健康”所作的定义是“健康不仅是没有疾病，而是指人在生理、心理和社会各方面都处于良好状态”。
,[2] 但有着五千年历史的中医，对此则有更为广博的理解。
,[3] 在宏观系统上，中医将人的生理及病理变化置于天地之中进行考察，探究其间的同构性和共振性，从而形成了“天—地—人”相应的医学模式。
《素问》说：“天覆地载，万物悉备，莫贵于人，人以天地之气生，四时之法成”。
唐代医家王冰也说：“不顺四时之和，数犯八风之害，与道相失，则天真之气，未期久远而致灭亡”，“故养生者必谨奉天时也”。
春夏季炎热，人们偏好冷饮，会伤阳气，而秋冬干燥寒冷，人们多食辛辣，可损阴气，故中医认为“春夏养阳，秋冬养阴”，说明人的气血要与四时变化相一致。
,[4] 在对立面的平衡上，中医认为健康就是机体处于阴阳谐调的状态。
《黄帝内经》上说：“阴平阳祕，精神乃治；阴阳离决，精气乃绝”。
生命顺势而为，则阴阳两方面促进生命运动；生命逆势而动，则阴阳两方面制约生命运动。
这种相生相克的过程，体现着大自然优胜劣汰的规律，是中华民族养生的基本哲学。
,[5] 在形神的关系上，中医主张要二者合一。
“形”指有形的身体，包括五脏六腑、筋脉骨骼、肌肉毛皮、五官九窍等生理组织器官；“神”则是指思维意识、情绪心理、聪明智慧等精神状态。
中医认为，“形为神之宅，神乃形之主；无形则神无以生，无神则形无以活”。
当二者不平衡时，便会导致形体虚弱乃至死亡，而在医疗实践中，则“粗守形”“上守神”。
,[6] 在心态的把持上，中医强调“正气为本”。
人所以得病，多是由于人体自身的正气不足、抵抗力下降的结果。
《内经》说“正气存内，邪不可干”，“精神内守，病安从来”？《伤寒论》中也有“四季脾旺不受邪”的论点。
行禅人生中的“疫”与益1965年，加里·斯奈德、艾伦·金斯伯格和菲利普·韦伦暂别凡尘杂念，行走在塔玛佩斯山上，冥思苦想。
在此番或曰作环山行禅的旅途中，他们既是诗人，又是佛学生。
他们依循佛教传统以顺时针方向经行，哪儿的自然风光让他们眼前一亮，他们就在哪儿择定仪式并逐一施行：以佛教、印度教的咏唱、诵咒、念经、祈愿等形式。
在1992年的一次采访中，斯奈德鼓励后来的经行者们能像他们表现出来的那样富有创新力。
采访最后他还想说点什么，但欲言又止，或许他原本还想说道说道他们仨选停的地点吧。
经行，是指出于特定目的，围绕神物进行庄严的旋回往返的活动。
这一古老的仪式植根于世界上诸多文化。
那么在现代的语境下，它的意思是什么呢？斯奈德解释道：“要诀是你得用心，得行动，一边走、一边停，一心一意。
它不过是人类驻足欣赏风光——同时也是审视自身——的一种方式。
”二十世纪九十年代末，我在加利福尼亚大学戴维斯分校研究生院师从斯奈德学习诗歌。
他教会我，人类察觉并能阐明自己在哪、周围是什么，有多么的重要。
这也是生物地域主义所倡导的观点。
二十世纪九十年代，英文教授、摄影师大卫·罗伯特森效仿斯奈德，推行环山绕行。
他会带着学生前往塔山作短途旅行，以纪念斯奈德、金斯伯格与韦伦。
1998年3月里寒冷的一天，我彼时的男友、现时的丈夫和我一同参与他组织的长达14英里的上山、下山旋回往返徒步，途中我们会停下来诵念相同的佛教、印度教咒语、经文，在1965年三人朝圣的十个地点祈愿。
罗伯特森此举意在让戴维斯分校里学习荒野文学课程的学生离开教室而深入风土。
该门课程以斯奈德的诗歌为一大特色，因此让学生去一趟塔山看上去是一个不错的选择。
雾气里弥漫着加州湾月桂的浓烈气味。
整整一天的时间里，我们在雾气中翻越一座又一座青翠的山坡、穿越一片又一片的加州栎、花旗松、北美红杉。
终于，我随大部队穿过了最后一片丛林。
这也太难熬了，即便我身体强壮、酷爱徒步。
历届韩素音翻译大奖赛竞赛原文及译文英译汉部分 (3)Beauty (excerpt) (3)美(节选) (3)The Literature of Knowledge and the Literature of Power byThomas De Quincey (8)知识文学与力量文学托马斯.昆西 (8)An Experience of Aesthetics by Robert Ginsberg (11)审美的体验罗伯特.金斯伯格 (11)A Person Who Apologizes Has the Moral Ball in His Court by Paul Johnson (14)谁给别人道歉，谁就在道义上掌握了主动保罗.约翰逊 (14)On Going Home by Joan Didion (18)回家琼.狄迪恩 (18)The Making of Ashenden (Excerpt) by Stanley Elkin (22)艾兴登其人（节选）斯坦利.埃尔金 (22)Beyond Life (28)超越生命[美] 卡贝尔著 (28)Envy by Samuel Johnson (33)论嫉妒[英]塞缪尔.约翰逊著 (33)中译英部分 (37)在义与利之外 (37)Beyond Righteousness and Interests (37)读书苦乐杨绛 (40)The Bitter-Sweetness of Reading Yang Jiang (40)想起清华种种王佐良 (43)Reminiscences of Tsinghua Wang Zuoliang (43)歌德之人生启示宗白华 (45)What Goethe's Life Reveals by Zong Baihua (45)怀想那片青草地赵红波 (48)Yearning for That Piece of Green Meadow by Zhao Hongbo (48)可爱的南京 (51)Nanjing the Beloved City (51)霞冰心 (53)The Rosy Cloud byBingxin (53)黎明前的北平 (54)Predawn Peiping (54)老来乐金克木 (55)Delights in Growing Old by Jin Kemu (55)可贵的“他人意识” (58)Calling for an Awareness of Others (58)教孩子相信 (61)To Implant In Our Children’s Young Hearts An Undying Faith In Humanity (61)英译汉部分Beauty (excerpt)美(节选)Judging from the scientists I know, including Eva and Ruth, and those whom I've read about, you can't pursue the laws of nature very long without bumping撞倒; 冲撞into beauty. “I don't know if it's the same beauty you see in the sunset,”a friend tells me, “but it feels the same.”This friend is a physicist, who has spent a long career deciphering破译(密码), 辨认(潦草字迹) what must be happening in the interior of stars. He recalls for me this thrill on grasping for the first time Dirac's⑴equations describing quantum mechanics, or those of Einstein describing relativity. “They're so beautiful,” he says, “you can see immediately they have to be true. Or at least on the way toward truth.” I ask him what makes a theory beautiful, and he replies, “Si mplicity, symmetry .对称(性); 匀称, 整齐, elegance, and power.”我结识一些科学家（包括伊娃和露丝），也拜读过不少科学家的著作，从中我作出推断：人们在探求自然规律的旅途中，须臾便会与美不期而遇。
第四届“语言桥”杯翻译大赛原文、参考译文、译文点评及特等奖译文一、第四届“语言桥”杯翻译大赛原文：When the Sun Stood StillRemember how time used to stretch forever?We are well into summer now here in the city. An early morning alarm gets my da ughter, Morgan, up for summer school. My son, Patrick, has gone off with his uncl e, and my husband and I have to go to our jobs and try to find a way to cram a vacation in somewhere.Summer wasn’t always like this. When I was growing up in a small California town called Lagunitas, a perfect stillness awaited us when we stepped out of school in June. We had no summer classes, no camps, no relatives to visit. The calendar w as a blank.Every day the hills of Lagunitas pressed in and the light pressed down. It was as i f the planet had come lazily to a stop so we could all hear the buzzing of the dra gonflies above the creek—and the beating of our own hearts.June was far away, September a distant blur. Without school to tell us who we we re—fifth-graders or sixth-graders, good students or good-offs—we were free just to be ourselves, to build forts, to moon around the neighborhood with a head full of f antastical schemes.There was time for everything. Minutes were as big as plums, hours the size of w atermelons. You could spend a quarter of an hour watching the dust motes in the shaft of sunlight from the doorway and wondering if anybody else could see them.I don’t really miss those long, slow days. What I miss is summertime, the illusion t hat the sun is standing still and the future is keeping its distance. On summer afte rnoons, nobody got any older. Kids didn’t have to worry about becoming adults, an d adults didn’t have to worry about running out of adulthood. You could lie on yourback watching clouds scud across the sky, and maybe later walk down to the sto re for a Popsicle. You could lose your watch and not miss it for days.These busy kids I’m raising today don’t know what summertime is. They are on cit y time. “My life is going too fast,” Patrick once grumbled as he got into bed. “This whole day went by just like that. I didn’t have enough fun.”He’s a city child, a child whose fun is packed into short, hurried weekends. Even i n summer his hours grow shorter and begin to run together, faster and faster. It w on’t be long before an hour—once an eternity—is for him, too, a walk to the groce ry store, three phone calls, half a movie.Maybe that’s why we still need long school vacations—to anchor kids to the earth, keep them from rocketing too fast out of childhood.If they have enough time on their hands, they might be among the lucky ones who carry their summertime with them into adulthood.二、参考译文：夏日好时光可还记得以往时间像是永无止境地拉长了的？ADAIR LARA撰思果译夏天真正来到了我们居住的城市。
The Alternate LifeThe alternate life is the consequence of the communications revolution of the last 30 years or so. There is another, highly competitive educational system, opposed in almost every essential way to traditional schooling, that operates on the child and youth from the age of 2. It takes up as much of his time as the school does, and it works on him with far greater effectiveness.That system is the linked structure of which television is the heart and which numbers among its constituents film, radio, comic books, pop music, sports—and the life styles (including the drug culture, permissive sex, and systematized antisocial conduct) which this structure either automatically or deliberately produces.This alternative life is a life; it is not a diversion, a hobby, an amusement. It offers its own disciplines, its own curriculum, its own ethical and cultural values, its own style and language. It works on children and youths every day, year after year, teaching them, forming them, conditioning them. And it is profoundly opposed to traditional education. There is no way of reconciling the values of literature or science with the values of the TV commercial. There is no way of reconciling the vision offered by Shakespeare or Newton with the vision of life offered by the “Gong Show”. Two systems of thought and feeling stand opposed to each other.This has never before been the case. The idea of education was never before opposed by a competitor. It was taken for granted because no alternative appeared on the horizon. But today there is a complete alternative life to which children submit themselves. This alternative life offers them heroes, slogans, images, forms of conduct, and content of a sort—and all run counter to the message given in the classroom.For the first time in history, the child is required to be a citizen of two cultures: the tradition and the alternate life. Is it any wonder that such a division of loyalties should result in the chaos we observe? In a deep sense, all our children (and, to a degree, our teachers, our parents, and ourselves) are schizophrenics. On the one hand is the reality-system expounded in a book, the idea, the cultural past; on the other hand is the far more vivid and comprehensible reality-system expounded by television, the rock star, the religion of instantaneous sensation, gratification and consumption.Good teachers, when you question them inexorably, almost always finally admit that their difficulties stem from the competition of the alternate life. And this competition they are not trained to meet. The alternate life has one special psychological effect that handicaps the teacher—any teacher, whether of writing or any other basic subject. That effect is a decline in the faculty of attention, and therefore a decline in the capacity to learn—not the innate capacity, but the capacity as it is conditioned by the media.This conception of the alternate life is probably debatable, and it certainly will not be accepted by everyone. Its claim to the interest of others, if not their agreement, lies in the fact that it goes beyond the present educational system and tries to locate the ultimate source of our troubles in the changes now agitating our entire Western culture.（节选自The Short Prose Reader (second edition) by Gilbert H. Muller and Harvey S. Wiener, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1982。
最深刻的人生我们头顶就是天空，布满了亮晶晶的星星。
我们经常躺在木筏上，看着天上的星星，并且讨论它们是造出来的还是偶然冒出来的。
吉姆说星星是造出来的，但我认为星星是偶然冒出来的。
我想如果要造那么多的星星，得花费相当长的时间。
吉姆说月亮可以把它们生出来，而这个说法似乎很有道理，所以我就没有反驳他了，因为我曾见过青蛙一次下的籽儿，也差不多有那么多，所以月亮当然也能下出那么多的星星来。
我们还常常看那些掉下来的星星，看着它们划出一道亮光。
吉姆认为是因为它们变坏了，所以才被赶出了自己的窝。
越来越多的人注意到天空被来自城市的光污染遮蔽。
有些人很多年来一次也没有见过月亮和星星。
对于我们整个人类的现况而言，这是一个恰当的暗喻。
十五世纪印度一位神秘主义诗人，迦比尔，类似于神秘的鹅妈妈，他有句令人难忘的名言，他说：“他们把自己的生命浪费在了各种主义中。
”尽管他只考虑他那个时代的少数几个主要宗教传统，但这个观点更深刻地适用于我们了解的各种宗教、政治派别、精神信仰、商人虚构的身份，甚至是构建哲学的理论。
这些信念的光辉，在最积极的方面可以对我们的人生作出指导。
但它们通常相当于一种光污染。
拥有知识的感觉是真理最大的敌人。
信仰和理论，以及与之相关的身份认同，和政治一样不可缺少，也一样具有吸引力，但是，从真正的哲学的角度来看，最坏而言，它们是阻碍，最好而言，它们是一次长长旅程的起点和终点，在这段旅程中，偶尔会身处黑暗，不过正好可以看一看我们头顶上照耀着的东西。
借用威廉·詹姆斯“最深刻的人生无处不在”这句话，我要讲的故事是最深刻的人生是如何无处不在的。
一个意义非凡的人生所具有的和谐就好比繁星，让我们这儿的任何一个人看见并思考。
伟大哲学家的问题、故事和命令不是在天体上闲逛的天使所说的话。
甚至最令人钦佩的思想家对我们而言也是和我们一样的普通人，他们也会做普通的事情，偶尔会感到疼痛或快乐，并且有时候会作出改变。
与普通人相比，他们并没有额外的非凡之处。
The BlanketFloyd DellPetey hadn’t really believed that Dad would be doing it—sending Granddad away. “Away” was what they were calling it. Not until now could he believe it of Dad.But here was the blanket that Dad had that day bought for him, and in the morning he’d be going away. And this was the last evening they’d be having together. Dad was off seeing that girl he was to marry. He’d not be back till late, and they could sit up and talk.It was a fine September night, with a silver moon riding high over the gully. When they’d washed up the supper dishes they went out on the shanty porch, the old man and the bit of a boy, taking their chairs. “I’ll get me fiddle,” said the old man, “and play ye some of the old tunes.” But instead of the fiddle he brought out the blanket. It was a big, double blanket, red, with black cross stripes.“Now, isn’t that a fine blanket!” said the old man, smoothing it over his knees. “And isn’t your father a kind man to be giving the old fellow a blanket like that to go away with? It cost something, it did—look at the wool of it! And warm it will be these cold winter nights to come. There’ll be few blankets there the equal of this one!”It was like Granddad to be saying that. He was trying to make it easier. He’d pretended all along it was he that wanting to go away to the great brick building—the government place, where he’d be with so many other old fellows having the best of everything.... But Petey hadn’t believed Dad would really do it, until this night when he brought home the blanket.“Oh, yes, it’s a fine blanket,” said Petey, and got up and went into the shanty. He wasn’t the kind to cry, and, besides, he was too old for that, being eleven. He’d just come in to fetch Granddad’s fiddle.The blanket slid to the floor as the old man took the fiddle and stood up. It was the last night they’d be having together. There wasn’t any need to say, “Play all the old tunes.” Granddad tuned up for a minute, and then said, “This is one you’ll like to remember.”The silver moon was high overhead, and there was a gentle breeze playing down the gully. He’d never be hearing Granddad play like this again. It was as well Dad was moving into that new house, away from here. He’d not want, Petey wouldn’t, to sit here on the old porch of fine evenings, with Granddad gone.The tune changed. “Here’s something gayer.” Petey sat and stared out over the gully. Dad would marry that girl. Yes, that girl who’d kissed him and slobbered over him, saying she’d try to be agood mother to him, and all.... His chair creaked as he involuntarily gave his body a painful twist.The tune stopped suddenly, and Granddad said: “It’s a poor tune, except to be dancing to.” And then: “It’s a fine girl your father’s going to marry. He’ll be feeling young again, with a pretty wife like that. And what would an old fellow like me be doing around their house, getting in the way, an old nuisance, what with my talk of aches and pains! And then there’ll be babies coming, and I’d not want to be there to hear them crying at all hours. It’s best that I take myself off, like I’m doing. One more tune or two, and then we’ll be going to bed to get some sleep against the morning, when I’ll pack up my fine blanket and take my leave. Listen to this, will you? It’s a bit sad, but a fine tune for a night like this.”They didn’t hear the two people coming down the gully path, Dad and the pretty girl with the hard, bright face like a china doll’s. but they heard her laugh, right by the porch, and the tune stopped on a wrong, high, startled note. Dad didn’t say anything, but the girl came forward and spoke to Granddad prettily: “I’ll not be seeing you leave in the morning, so I came over to say good-by.”“It’s kind of you,” said Granddad, with his eyes cast down; and then, seeing the blanket at his feet, he stopped to pick it up. “Andwill you look at this,” he said in embarrassment, “the fine blanket my son has given me to go away with!”“Yes,” she said, “it’s a fine blanket.” She felt of the wool, and repeated in surprise, “A fine blanket—I’ll say it is!” She turned to Dad, and said to him coldly, “it cost something, that.”He cleared his throat, and said defensively, “I wanted him to have the best...”The girl stood there, still intent on the blanket. “It’s double, too,” she said reproachfully to Dad.“Yes,” said Granddad, “it’s double—a fine blanket for an old fellow to be going away with.”The boy went abruptly into the shanty. He was looking for something. He could hear that girl reproaching Dad, and Dad becoming angry in his slow way. And now she was suddenly going away in a huff.... As Petey came out, she turned and called back, “All the same, he doesn’t need a double blanket!” And she ran up the gully path.Dad was looking after her uncertainly.“Oh, she’s right,” said the boy coldly. “Here, Dad”—and he held out a pair of scissors. “Cut the blanket in two.”Both of them stared at the boy, startled. “Cut it in two, I tell you, Dad!” he cried out. “And keep the other half!”“That’s not a bad idea,” said Granddad gently. “I don’t need so much of a blanket.”“Yes,” said the boy harshly, “a single blanket is enough for an old man when he’s sent away. We’ll save the other half, Dad; it will come in handy later.”“Now, what do you mean by that?” asked Dad.“I mean,” said the boy slowly,” that I’ll give it to you, Dad—when you’re old and I’m sending you—away.”There was a silence, and then Dad went over to Granddad and stood before him, not speaking. But Granddad understood, for he put out a hand and laid it on Dad’s shoulder. Petey was watching them. And he heard Granddad whisper, “It’s all right, son—I knew you didn’t mean it....” And then Petey cried.But it didn’t matter—because they were all three crying together.译文：一床双人毛毯（美）弗罗伊德•戴尔晴朗的九月的夜晚，银色的月光洒落在溪谷上。
