马克吐温短篇小说-百万英镑4

“But, my dear sir, I can’t give these orders, unless you can wait indefinitely, or change the bill.”
“Indefinitely! It’s a weak word, sir, a weak word. Eternally–that’s the word, sir. Tod, rush these things through, and send them to the gentleman’s address without any waste of time. Let the minor customers wait. Set down the gentleman’s address and–”
“I’m changing my quarters. I will drop in and leave the new address.”
“Quite right, sir, quite right. One moment–let me show you out, sir. There–good day, sir, good day.”

Well, don’t you see what was bound to happen? I drifted naturally into buying whatever I wanted, and asking for change. Within a week I was sumptuously equipped with all needful comforts and luxuries, and was housed in an expensive private hotel in Hanover Square. I took my dinners there, but for breakfast I stuck by Harris’s humble feeding house, where I had got my first meal on my million-pound bill. I was the making of Harris. The fact had gone all abroad that the foreign crank who carried million-pound bills in his vest pocket was the patron saint of the place. That was enough. From being a poor, struggling, little hand-to-mouth enterprise, it had become celebrated, and overcrowded with customers. Harris was so grateful that he forced loans upon me, and would not be denied; and so, pauper as I was, I had money to spend, and was living like the rich and the great. I judged that there was going to be a crash by and by, but I was in now and must swim across or drown. You see there was just that element of impending disaster to give a serious side, a sober side, yes, a tragic side, to a state of things which would otherwise have been purely ridiculous. In the night, in the dark, the tragedy part was always to the front, and always warning, always threatening; and so I moaned and tossed, and sleep was hard to find. But in the cheerful daylight the tragedy element faded out and disappeared, and I walked on air, and was happy to giddiness, to intoxication, you may say.

You know, I even kept my old suit of rags, and every now and then appeared in them, so as to have the old pleasure of buying trifles, and being insulted, and then shooting the scoffer dead with the million-pound bill. But I couldn’t keep that up. The illustrated papers made the outfit so familiar that when I went out in it I was at once recognized and followed by a crowd, and if I attempted a purchase the man would offer me his whole shop on credit before I could pull my note on him. About the tenth day of my fame I went to fulfil my duty to my flag by paying my respects to the American minister. He received me with the enthusiasm proper in my case, upbraided me for being so tardy in my duty, and said that there was only one way to get his forgiveness, and that was to take the seat at his dinner-party that night made vacant by the illness of one of his guests. I said I would, and we got to talking. It turned out that he and my father had been schoolmates in boyhood, Yale students together later, and always warm friends up to my father’s death. So then he required me to put in at his house all the odd time I might have to spare, and I was very willing, of course.

老爸是耶鲁的，
自己确实没混好。
那又有什么，
在我拔出百万大钞之前，
店主们甚至都愿意，
以店相许了。
所以，
一张大钞足以，
看遍世间炎凉。

good day, sir~(此处必须有颤音))
have a good day~~~
永远的高中时代，
课文中经典的记忆。
哈哈。

patron 资助人
saint 圣人

马克吐温短篇小说-百万英镑4