What do you think, Daddy? The English instructor said that my last paper shows an unusual amount of originality. She did, truly. Those were her words. It doesn't seem possible, does it, considering the eighteen years of training that I've had? The aim of the John Grier Home (as you doubtless know and heartily approve of) is to turn the ninety-seven orphans into ninety-seven twins.
叔叔，您猜怎么着？英文老师夸奖我上一篇作文别出心裁。她真的这么说！她就是这么讲的。想想我这18年来受的训练，这似乎不太可能，不是吗？约翰•格利尔孤儿院的目的，就是要把97个小孤儿变成97个相貌、言行举止都一样的人。
The unusual artistic ability which I exhibit was developed at an early age through drawing chalk pictures of Mrs. Lippett on the woodshed door.
我不寻常的艺术天分，倒是在很小时就在门板上画李皮太太培养出来的。
I hope that I don't hurt your feelings when I criticize the home of my youth? But you have the upper hand, you know, for if I become too impertinent, you can always stop payment of your cheques. That isn't a very polite thing to say--but you can't expect me to have any manners; a foundling asylum isn't a young ladies' finishing school.
我对小时候的家说长道短，希望您不要不高兴。不过您大权在握，如果我冒犯了您，您随时可以停止您的资助。这样说是不够礼貌，不过您不能期望我有什么教养，孤儿院毕竟不是淑女训练学校。
You know, Daddy, it isn't the work that is going to be hard in college. It's the play. Half the time I don't know what the girls are talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that every one but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand the language. It's a miserable feeling. I've had it all my life. At the high school the girls would stand in groups and just look at me. I was queer and different and everybody knew it. I could FEEL 'John Grier Home' written on my face. And then a few charitable ones would make a point of coming up and saying something polite. I HATED EVERY ONE OF THEM--the charitable ones most of all.
叔叔，您知道的，大学里难的不是功课，而是娱乐。很多时候，我都不懂女孩们在谈些什么，她们的玩笑似乎都与她们的过去联系在一起。这个过去人人有份，却与我无缘。我在她们的世界里就像是一个外国人，听不懂她们的语言。我很沮丧，我这一生浸透了沮丧。高中时，女孩们一群一伙的，冷眼相看。我很奇怪，与众不同，人人都知道这一点。我似乎感觉“约翰•格利尔孤儿院”就写在我脸上。然后会有一些好人走来安慰我。我恨他们每一个人——尤其是那些好人。
Nobody here knows that I was brought up in an asylum. I told Sallie McBride that my mother and father were dead, and that a kind old gentleman was sending me to college which is entirely true so far as it goes. I don't want you to think I am a coward, but I do want to be like the other girls, and that Dreadful Home looming over my childhood is the one great big difference. If I can turn my back on that and shut out the remembrance, I think, I might be just as desirable as any other girl. I don't believe there's any real, underneath difference, do you?
这里没有人知道我是孤儿院长大的。我告诉莎莉•麦克白我父母双亡，是一位好心的老先生送我上大学的——到目前为止，这都是事实。我不希望您觉得我很蠢，不过我真的希望跟其他女孩子一样，而那可怕的孤儿院的阴影却笼罩着我的童年，把我和大家隔绝开来。若能忘怀此事，把它逐出脑海，我想我应可以变得跟其他女孩一样可爱。我不认为自己和她们有什么真的区别。您说是吗？
Anyway, Sallie McBride likes me!
无论如何，莎莉•麦克白喜欢我！
Yours ever, Judy Abbott (Nee Jerusha.)
您永远的茱蒂•艾伯特（原名乔若莎）
I've just been reading this letter over and it sounds pretty un-cheerful. But can't you guess that I have a special topic due Monday morning and a review in geometry and a very sneezy cold?
我刚才又把信重读了一遍，调子似乎很低沉。但是，您可能猜不到，我星期一早上要交一篇特殊的作文，还要复习几何学，而且还得了感冒，不停地打喷嚏。
I forgot to post this yesterday, so I will add an indignant postscript. We had a bishop this morning, and WHAT DO YOU THINK HE SAID?
昨天忘了发信，今天再发点牢骚。早上来了个主教，您猜他都说了些什么？
'The most beneficent promise made us in the Bible is this, "The poor ye have always with you." They were put here in order to keep us charitable.'
“圣经给我们的最佳许诺是‘常有穷人和你们同在’，他们可使我们永远以慈悲为怀。”
The poor, please observe, being a sort of useful domestic animal. If I hadn't grown into such a perfect lady, I should have gone up after service and told him what I thought.
您瞧，穷人成了有用的家畜，要不是我已经成了一位有教养的小姐，我本来会在礼拜结束后跑去告诉他我的想法。
**********************************
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
亲爱的长腿叔叔：
I'm in the basket-ball team and you ought to see the bruise on my left shoulder. It's blue and mahogany with little streaks of orange. Julia Pendleton tried for the team, but she didn't get in. Hooray!
我已经入选篮球队了，您真该看看我左肩上的“成绩”，又青又紫的，绕着一圈紫色的边。茱莉亚•平莱顿也报了名，不过没入选真棒！
You see what a mean disposition I have.
您瞧，我心胸多狭窄。
College gets nicer and nicer. I like the girls and the teachers and the classes and the campus and the things to eat. We have ice-cream twice a week and we never have corn-meal mush.
大学越来越有趣了。我喜欢这些女孩们，喜欢老师，喜欢上课，喜欢校园，喜欢那些好吃的食物——每周吃两次的冰淇淋，从不吃孤儿院的玉米粥。
You only wanted to hear from me once a month, didn't you? And I've been peppering you with letters every few days! But I've been so excited about all these new adventures that I MUST talk to somebody; and you're the only one I know. Please excuse my exuberance; I'll settle pretty soon. If my letters bore you, you can always toss them into the wastebasket. I promise not to write another till the middle of November.
您只要我一个月写一封信，不是吗？我却每隔几天就寄一封给您！我对这些新奇的经历是这么的兴奋，我一定要找个人倾诉，您是我惟一认识的人。请原谅我的兴奋吧，我很快就会安定下来的。如果嫌烦，就把它们丢到废纸篓里。我保证11月中旬以前不再写信就是了。
Yours most loquaciously, Judy Abbott
您太长舌的朋友，茱蒂•艾伯特
**********************************
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
亲爱的长腿叔叔：
Listen to what I've learned to-day.
请看我今天的学习内容。
The area of the convex surface of the frustum of a regular pyramid is half the product of the sum of the perimeters of its bases by the altitude of either of its trapezoids.
正棱锥形体平截头凸面的面积等于底边总长和梯形一边的高度乘积的一半。
It doesn't sound true, but it is--I can prove it!
听起来似乎不对，实际非常正确，我还验算过呢！
You've never heard about my clothes, have you, Daddy? Six dresses, all new and beautiful and bought for me--not handed down from somebody bigger. Perhaps you don't realize what a climax that marks in the career of an orphan? You gave them to me, and I am very, very, VERY much obliged. It's a fine thing to be educated--but nothing compared to the dizzying experience of owning six new dresses. Miss Pritchard, who is on the visiting committee, picked them out-- not Mrs. Lippett, thank goodness. I have an evening dress, pink mull over silk (I'm perfectly beautiful in that), and a blue church dress, and a dinner dress of red veiling with Oriental trimming (makes me look like a Gipsy), and another of rose-coloured challis, and a grey street suit, and an every-day dress for classes. That wouldn't be an awfully big wardrobe for Julia Rutledge Pendleton, perhaps, but for Jerusha Abbott--Oh, my!
您还没听说过我的衣服，是吗？我有6件漂亮的新衣服——是专为我买的，而不是什么人穿了嫌大嫌小的衣服。也许您无法理解这在一个孤儿的生命中意味着什么。这些都是您给我的，我非常非常地感激您。可以受教育固然不错，不过没有什么事比拥有6件新衣服更让人快乐的了。这些衣服都是参访团的普查德小姐替我挑的，感谢上帝幸好不是李皮太太。一件是缀着石竹花的丝绸晚礼服（我穿上很美），一件蓝色礼拜服，两件餐服：一件是红色面料，上面镶着东方花边（我穿上后像个吉卜赛人）；另一件是玫瑰红印花布料的；一套日常穿的灰色套服；还有一件是平时上课穿的。这些服装对茱莉亚•平莱顿来说算不得什么，可是对茱蒂•艾伯特来说——天呀，委实了不起。
I suppose you're thinking now what a frivolous, shallow little beast she is, and what a waste of money to educate a girl?
我猜您现在一定这样想——她是如此轻浮浅薄，多么愚蠢的女孩子啊！让这样一个女孩子受教育真是浪费钱！
But, Daddy, if you'd been dressed in checked ginghams all your life, you'd appreciate how I feel. And when I started to the high school, I entered upon another period even worse than the checked ginghams.
不过叔叔，要是您—辈子除了花格布，没穿过别的，您会明白我的感受的。我上高中以后，穿的比花格布还不如呢。
You can't know how I dreaded appearing in school in those miserable poor-box dresses. I was perfectly sure to be put down in class next to the girl who first owned my dress, and she would whisper and giggle and point it out to the others. The bitterness of wearing your enemies' cast-off clothes eats into your soul. If I wore silk stockings for the rest of my life, I don't believe I could obliterate the scar.
您无法想像我多么害怕穿那些可怕的救济服出现在学校里，我担心邻座的姑娘原本就是衣服的主人，而她会偷偷将这事告诉别的姑娘，又讲又笑并对我指指点点。想到也许穿着自己讨厌的人扔掉的衣服，真是心如刀绞。即使我今后一辈子都能穿上长统丝袜，也无法抹去心头的伤痕。
PS. I know I'm not to expect any letters in return, and I've been warned not to bother you with questions, but tell me, Daddy, just this once--are you awfully old or just a little old? And are you perfectly bald or just a little bald? It is very difficult thinking about you in the abstract like a theorem in geometry.
又及：我知道我不该奢求得到回信，而我也被告诫过不要拿问题来打扰您。不过，长腿叔叔，就此一次，下不为例——您是老态龙钟呢，还是半老？头发全部脱落了呢，还是刚刚有些秃顶？从没见过您而要来想象，真是有点困难。
Given a tall rich man who hates girls, but is very generous to one quite impertinent girl, what does he look like?
一个身材高高的，厌恶女孩子却又对一个卤莽无礼的女孩子慷慨相助的人，该是长得什么样子呢？
R.S.V.P.
盼复。
**********************************
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
亲爱的长腿叔叔：
You never answered my question and it was very important.
您对我的问题置之不理，但对我来说那是非常重要的。
ARE YOU BALD?
您秃顶了吗？
I have it planned exactly what you look like--very satisfactorily-- until I reach the top of your head, and then I AM stuck. I can't decide whether you have white hair or black hair or sort of sprinkly grey hair or maybe none at all.
我画着您的长像——一切都很顺利——直到您的头顶，我卡壳了。我无法确定您的头发是白的、黑的或灰的，或者干脆秃顶。
Here is your portrait:
这是您的画像。
But the problem is, shall I add some hair?
问题是，我该不该加点头发上去？
Would you like to know what colour your eyes are? They're grey, and your eyebrows stick out like a porch roof (beetling, they're called in novels), and your mouth is a straight line with a tendency to turn down at the corners. Oh, you see, I know! You're a snappy old thing with a temper.
您想知道您的眼睛是什么颜色吗？灰色的，眉毛突出像廊檐（小说中称为悬崖）。嘴像两角下垂的一条直线。对啦，您瞧，我晓得！您肯定是—个精神饱满、脾气暴躁的老家伙。
(Chapel bell.)
（做礼拜的钟声响了！）
9.45 p.m.
晚上9：45
I have a new unbreakable rule: never, never to study at night no matter how many written reviews are coming in the morning. Instead, I read just plain books--I have to, you know, because there are eighteen blank years behind me. You wouldn't believe, Daddy, what an abyss of ignorance my mind is; I am just realizing the depths myself. The things that most girls with a properly assorted family and a home and friends and a library know by absorption, I have never heard of. For example:
我给自己订了一条雷打不动严格的规定：绝不……绝不在晚上学习，只看小说，不管隔天有多少测验——我不得不这样，您知道的，我已经白白地浪费了18年。您无法想像，叔叔，我是多么无知。我才刚开始知道自己的浅薄。一个正常的有家庭、有朋友、有图书馆陪伴的女孩子自然而然知道的事情，对我而言却是闻所未闻的。例如：
I never read Mother Goose or David Copperfield or Ivanhoe or Cinderella or Blue Beard or Robinson Crusoe or Jane Eyre or Alice in Wonderland or a word of Rudyard Kipling. I didn't know that Henry the Eighth was married more than once or that Shelley was a poet. I didn't know that people used to be monkeys and that the Garden of Eden was a beautiful myth. I didn't know that R. L. S. stood for Robert Louis Stevenson or that George Eliot was a lady. I had never seen a picture of the 'Mona Lisa' and (it's true but you won't believe it) I had never heard of Sherlock Holmes.
我从没听过《鹅妈妈》或《蓝胡子》或《劫后英雄传》或《灰姑娘》或《罗宾逊》或《简•爱》或是《爱丽丝漫游记》，或者吉卜林的片言只语，我不知道亨利八世曾经再婚，雪莱是诗人，人的祖先是猴子，也没有听说过伊甸园是个美丽的神话。我不知道R．L．S是罗伯特•路易斯•史蒂文生的缩写，更不知乔治•艾略特是女性。我从未看过一幅叫《蒙娜丽莎的微笑》的画，也从未听说过什么福尔摩斯。
Now, I know all of these things and a lot of others besides, but you can see how much I need to catch up. And oh, but it's fun! I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an 'engaged' on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read one book isn't enough.
现在，这些东西我都知道了，还知道了一大堆其他的东西，您瞧！我还必须奋发努力跟上进度。喔！不过这是件有趣的事：我盼望黄昏早些降临，好在门口挂上“读书中”的牌子，然后穿上我舒服的红睡袍和皮拖鞋，把枕头堆在椅背上，打开手边的台灯，然后埋头读啊……读啊，一直读下去。
I have four going at once. Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and Vanity Fair and Kipling's Plain Tales and--don't laugh--Little Women. I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on Little Women. I haven't told anybody though (that WOULD stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month's allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I'll know what she is talking about!
一本书嫌不够，我常常找来4本书同时进行。现在，我正在读的是丁尼生的《名利场》和吉卜林的《平凡的故事》。另外，请不要笑话我，还有《小妇人》。我发现自己是大学里惟一没有受到《小妇人》熏陶的姑娘。不过我没告诉任何人，我只是悄悄地溜出去，用上个月剩的1.12块零用钱买了它。如果再有人提起腌酸橙，我就知道他们在讲些什么了。
(Ten o'clock bell. This is a very interrupted letter.)
（10点钟声响了，这封信被打断了多次。）
**********************************
Sir,
先生：
I have the honour to report fresh explorations in the field of geometry. On Friday last we abandoned our former works in parallelopipeds and proceeded to truncated prisms. We are finding the road rough and very uphill.
我十分高兴地告诉您我在几何学方面取得的成绩。上周五我们放弃了平行六面体的功课，转而学习截头棱柱体。学习的道路艰难坎坷。
The Christmas holidays begin next week and the trunks are up. The corridors are so filled up that you can hardly get through, and everybody is so bubbling over with excitement that studying is getting left out. I'm going to have a beautiful time in vacation; there's another Freshman who lives in Texas staying behind, and we are planning to take long walks and if there's any ice-- learn to skate. Then there is still the whole library to be read-- and three empty weeks to do it in!
下个星期圣诞假期就要到了。过道里全是行李箱，满得难以通行，大家兴高采烈，把学业全都抛到脑外。我也要好好享受自己的假期了，一个德州的新生也准备留下来，我们计划要远行，如果有冰的话，我们还要学溜冰。还有一整座图书馆的书可读——有整整3个星期可以在里面读!
Goodbye, Daddy, I hope that you are feeling as happy as am.
晚安，叔叔，我希望您跟我一样快乐。
Yours ever, Judy
您永远的茱蒂
PS. Don't forget to answer my question. If you don't want the trouble of writing, have your secretary telegraph. He can just say: Mr. Smith is quite bald, or Mr. Smith is not bald, or Mr. Smith has white hair.
又及：别忘了答复我的问题。您若无法提笔，也可请秘书代劳。只消说：史密斯先生很秃或史密斯先生不秃或史密斯满头白发。
And you can deduct the twenty-five cents out of my allowance.
您可以在我的零用钱里扣去2角5分。
Goodbye till January--and a merry Christmas!
明年—月再见。祝您圣诞快乐！
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