问答题农业税

问答题black sheep

问答题Duke it out

问答题北极

问答题飞行模式

问答题European Economic Community (EEC)

问答题copy right

问答题十二五规划

问答题ready-made garment

问答题环保产品

问答题工会

问答题经济全球化

问答题吃货

问答题Plc

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问答题养老保险

问答题低碳能源

问答题 And then we have Major Weir; for although even his house is now demolished, old Edinburgh cannot clear herself of his unholy memory. He and his sister lived together in an odour of sour piety. She was a marvelous spinster; he had a rare gift of supplication, and was known among devout admirers by the name of Angelical Thomas. He was a tall, black man, and ordinarily looked down to the ground; a grim countenance, and a big nose. His garb was still a cloak, and somewhat dark, and he never went without his staff. How it came about that Angelical Thomas was burned in company with his staff, and his sister in gentler manner hanged, and whether these two were simply religious maniacs of the more furious order, or had real as well as imaginary sins upon their old-world shoulders, are points happily beyond the reach of our intention. At least, it is suitable enough that out of this superstitious city some such example should have been put forth: the outcome and line flower of dark and vehement religion. And at least the facts struck the public fancy and brought forth a remarkable family of myths. It would appear that the Major’ s staff went upon his errands, and even ran before him with a lantern on dark nights. Gigantic females, ‘stentoriously laughing and gaping with tehees of laughter’ at unseasonable hours of night and morning, haunted the purlieus of his abode. His house fell under such a load of infamy that no one dared to sleep in it, until municipal improvement leveled the structure to the ground. And my father has often been told in the nursery how the devil’ s coach, drawn by six coal-black horses with fiery eyes, would drive at night into the West Bow, and belated people might see the dead Major through the glasses. Another legend is that of the two maiden sisters. A legend I am afraid it may be, in the most discreditable meaning of the term; or perhaps something worse—a mere yesterday’ s fiction. But it is a story of some vitality, and is worthy of a place in the Edinburgh calendar. This pair inhabited a single room; from the facts, it must have been double-bedded; and it may have been of some dimensions: but when all is said, it was a single room. Here our two spinsters fell out—on some point of controversial divinity belike (也许) : but fell out so bitterly that there was never a word spoken between them black or white from that day forward, foil would have thought they would separate: but no; whether from lack of means, or the Scottish fear of scandal, they continued to keep house together where they were. A chalk line drawn upon the floor separated their two domains; it bisected (切成两部分) the doorway and the fireplace, so that each could go out and in, and do her cooking, without violating the territory of the other. So, for years, they coexisted in a hateful silence; their meals, their ablutions, their friendly visitors, exposed to an unfriendly scrutiny; and at night, in the dark watches, each could hear the breathing of her enemy. Never did four walls look down upon an uglier spectacle than these sisters rivaling in unsisterliness. Here is a canvas for Hawthorne to have turned into a cabinet picture—he had a Puritanic vein. which would have fitted him to treat this Puritanic horror; he could have shown them to us in their sicknesses and at their hideous twin devotions, thumbing a pair of great Bibles , or praying aloud for each other’ s penitence with marrowy(多髓的, 有力的) emphasis; now each, with kilted petticoat, at her own corner of the fire on some tempestuous evening; now sitting each at her window, looking out upon the summer landscape sloping far below them towards the firth(峡湾) field-paths where they had wandered hand in hand; or, as age and infirmity grow upon them and prolonged their toilettes, and their bands began to tremble and their heads to nod involuntarily, growing only the more steeled in enmity with years; until one fine day, at a word, a look, a visit or the approach of death, their hearts would melt and the chalk boundary be overstepped for ever. Alas! To those who know the ecclesiastical history of the race—the most perverse and melancholy in man’ s annals— this will seem only a figure of much that is typical of Scotland and her high-seated capital above the Forth—a figure so grimly realistic that it may pass with strangers for a caricature. 

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