【英文原著类】THE DIARY OF A MAN OF FIFTY(一个五十岁人的日记).pdf

THE DIARY OF A MAN OF FIFTY
THE DIARY OF A MAN
OF FIFTY
H. James
1
THE DIARY OF A MAN OF FIFTY
Florence, April 5th, 1874.--They told me I should find Italy greatly
changed; and in seven-and-twenty years there is room for changes. But
to me everything is so perfectly the same that I seem to be living my
youth over again; all the forgotten impressions of that enchanting time
come back to me. At the moment they were powerful enough; but they
afterwards faded away. What in the world became of them?
Whatever es of such things, in the long intervals of consciousness?
Where do they hide themselves away? in what unvisited cupboards and
crannies of our being do they preserve themselves? They are like the
lines of a letter written in sympathetic ink; hold the letter to the fire for a
while and the grateful warmth brings out the invisible words. It is the
warmth of this yellow sun of Florence that has been restoring the text of
my own young romance; the thing has been lying before me today as a
clear, fresh page. There have been moments during the last ten years
when I have fell so portentously old, so fagged and finished, that I
should have taken as a very bad joke any intimation that this present
sense of juvenility was still in store for me. It won't last, at any rate; so
I had better make the best of it. But I confess it surprises me. I have
led too serious a life; but that perhaps, after all, preserves one's youth.
At all events, I have travelled too far, I have worked too hard, I have
lived in brutal climates and associated with tiresome people. When a
man has reached his fifty-second year without being, materially, the
worse for wear--when he has fair health, a fair fortune, a tidy conscience
and plete exemption from embarrassing relatives--I suppose he is
bound, in delicacy, to write himself happy. But I confess I shirk this
obligation. I have not been miserable; I won't go so far as to say that--
or at least as to write it. But happ