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1、【英文读物】The Story of Doctor DolittleINTRODUCTION TO THE TENTH PRINTING THERE are some of us now reaching middle age who discover themselves to be lamenting the past in one respect if in none other, that there are no books written now for children comparable with those of thirty years ago. I say writte
2、n for children because the new psychological business of writing about them as though they were small pills or hatched in some especially scientific method is extremely popular to-day. Writing for children rather than about them is very difficult as everybody who has tried it knows. It can only be d
3、one, I am convinced, by somebody having a great deal of the child in his own outlook and sensibilities. Such was the author of “The Little Duke” and “The Dove in the Eagles Nest,” such the author of “A Flatiron for a Farthing,” and “The Story of a Short Life.” Such, above all, the author of “Alice i
4、n Wonderland.” Grownups imagine that they can do the trick by adopting babyviii language and talking down to their very critical audience. There never was a greater mistake. The imagination of the author must be a childs imagination and yet maturely consistent, so that the White Queen in “Alice,” fo
5、r instance, is seen just as a child would see her, but she continues always herself through all her distressing adventures. The supreme touch of the white rabbit pulling on his white gloves as he hastens is again absolutely the childs vision, but the white rabbit as guide and introducer of Alices ad
6、ventures belongs to mature grown insight. Geniuses are rare and, without being at all an undue praiser of times past, one can say without hesitation that until the appearance of Hugh Lofting, the successor of Miss Yonge, Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Gatty and Lewis Carroll had not appeared. I remember the delig
7、ht with which some six months ago I picked up the first “Dolittle” book in the Hampshire bookshop at Smith College in Northampton. One of Mr. Loftings pictures was quite enough for me. The picture that I lighted upon when I first opened the book was the one of the monkeysix making a chain with their
8、 arms across the gulf. Then I looked further and discovered Bumpo reading fairy stories to himself. And then looked again and there was a picture of John Dolittles house. But pictures are not enough although most authors draw so badly that if one of them happens to have the genius for line that Mr.
9、Lofting shows there must be, one feels, something in his writing as well. There is. You cannot read the first paragraph of the book, which begins in the right way “Once upon a time” without knowing that Mr. Lofting believes in his story quite as much as he expects you to. That is the first essential
10、 for a story teller. Then you discover as you read on that he has the right eye for the right detail. What child-inquiring mind could resist this intriguing sentence to be found on the second page of the book: “Besides the gold-fish in the pond at the bottom of his garden, he had rabbits in the pant
11、ry, white mice in his piano, a squirrel in the linen closet and a hedgehog in the cellar.” x And then when you read a little further you will discover that the Doctor is not merely a peg on whom to hang exciting and various adventures but that he is himself a man of original and lively character. He
12、 is a very kindly, generous man, and anyone who has ever written stories will know that it is much more difficult to make kindly, generous characters interesting than unkindly and mean ones. But Dolittle is interesting. It is not only that he is quaint but that he is wise and knows what he is about.
13、 The reader, however young, who meets him gets very soon a sense that if he were in trouble, not necessarily medical, he would go to Dolittle and ask his advice about it. Dolittle seems to extend his hand from the page and grasp that of his reader, and I can see him going down the centuries a kind o
14、f Pied Piper with thousands of children at his heels. But not only is he a darling and alive and credible but his creator has also managed to invest everybody else in the book with the same kind of life. Now this business of giving life to animals, making them talk and behave like humanxi beings, is
15、 an extremely difficult one. Lewis Carroll absolutely conquered the difficulties, but I am not sure that anyone after him until Hugh Lofting has really managed the trick; even in such a masterpiece as “The Wind in the Willows” we are not quite convinced. John Dolittles friends are convincing because
16、 their creator never forces them to desert their own characteristics. Polynesia, for instance, is natural from first to last. She really does care about the Doctor but she cares as a bird would care, having always some place to which she is going when her business with her friends is over. And when
17、Mr. Lofting invents fantastic animals he gives them a kind of credible possibility which is extraordinarily convincing. It will be impossible for anyone who has read this book not to believe in the existence of the pushmi-pullyu, who would be credible enough even were there no drawing of it, but the
18、 picture on page 153 settles the matter of his truth once and for all. In fact this book is a work of genius and, as always with works of genius, it is difficult to analyze the elements that have gone to makexii it. There is poetry here and fantasy and humor, a little pathos but, above all, a number
19、 of creations in whose existence everybody must believe whether they be children of four or old men of ninety or prosperous bankers of forty-five. I dont know how Mr. Lofting has done it; I dont suppose that he knows himself. There it isthe first real childrens classic since “Alice.” Hugh Walpole. T
20、HE STORY OF DOCTOR DOLITTLE THE FIRST CHAPTER PUDDLEBY ONCE upon a time, many years agowhen our grandfathers were little childrenthere was a doctor; and his name was DolittleJohn Dolittle, M.D. “M.D.” means that he was a proper doctor and knew a whole lot. He lived in a little town called, Puddleby-
21、on-the-Marsh. All the folks, young and old, knew him well by sight. And whenever he walked down the street in his high hat everyone would say, “There goes the Doctor!Hes a clever man.” And the dogs and the children would all run up and follow behind him; and2 even the crows that lived in the church-
22、tower would caw and nod their heads. The house he lived in, on the edge of the town, was quite small; but his garden was very large and had a wide lawn and stone seats and weeping-willows hanging over. His sister, Sarah Dolittle, was housekeeper for him; but the Doctor looked after the garden himsel
23、f. He was very fond of animals and kept many kinds of pets. Besides the gold-fish in the pond at the bottom of his garden, he had rabbits in the pantry, white mice in his piano, a squirrel in the linen closet and a hedgehog in the cellar. He had a cow with a calf too, and an old lame horsetwenty-fiv
24、e years of ageand chickens, and pigeons, and two lambs, and many other animals. But his favorite pets were Dab-Dab the duck, Jip the dog, Gub-Gub the baby pig, Polynesia the parrot, and the owl Too-Too. His sister used to grumble about all these animals and said they made the house untidy. And one d
25、ay when an old lady with rheumatism came to see the Doctor, she sat on the hedgehog who was sleeping on the sofa and never came34 to see him any more, but drove every Saturday all the way to Oxenthorpe, another town ten miles off, to see a different doctor. woman leaving doctors house“And she never
26、came to see him any more”Then his sister, Sarah Dolittle, came to him and said, “John, how can you expect sick people to come and see you when you keep all these animals in the house? Its a fine doctor would have his parlor full of hedgehogs and mice! Thats the fourth personage these animals have dr
27、iven away. Squire Jenkins and the Parson say they wouldnt come near your house againno matter how sick they are. We are getting poorer every day. If you go on like this, none of the best people will have you for a doctor.” “But I like the animals better than the best people,” said the Doctor. “You a
28、re ridiculous,” said his sister, and walked out of the room. So, as time went on, the Doctor got more and more animals; and the people who came to see him got less and less. Till at last he had no one leftexcept the Cats-meat-Man, who didnt mind any kind of animals. But the Cats-meat-Man5 wasnt very
29、 rich and he only got sick once a yearat Christmas-time, when he used to give the Doctor sixpence for a bottle of medicine. Sixpence a year wasnt enough to live oneven in those days, long ago; and if the Doctor hadnt had some money saved up in his money-box, no one knows what would have happened. An
30、d he kept on getting still more pets; and of course it cost a lot to feed them. And the money he had saved up grew littler and littler. Then he sold his piano, and let the mice live in a bureau-drawer. But the money he got for that too began to go, so he sold the brown suit he wore on Sundays and we
31、nt on becoming poorer and poorer. And now, when he walked down the street in his high hat, people would say to one another, “There goes John Dolittle, M.D.! There was a time when he was the best known doctor in the West CountryLook at him nowHe hasnt any money and his stockings are full of holes!” B
32、ut the dogs and the cats and the children still ran up and followed him through the townthe same as they had done when he was rich.THE SECOND CHAPTER ANIMAL LANGUAGE IT happened one day that the Doctor was sitting in his kitchen talking with the Cats-meat-Man who had come to see him with a stomach-a
33、che. “Why dont you give up being a peoples doctor, and be an animal-doctor?” asked the Cats-meat-Man. The parrot, Polynesia, was sitting in the window looking out at the rain and singing a sailor-song to herself. She stopped singing and started to listen. “You see, Doctor,” the Cats-meat-Man went on
34、, “you know all about animalsmuch more than what these here vets do. That book you wroteabout cats, why, its wonderful! I cant read or write myselfor maybe Id write some books. But my wife, Theodosia, shes a scholar,8 she is. And she read your book to me. Well, its wonderfulthats all can be saidwond
35、erful. You might have been a cat yourself. You know the way they think. And listen: you can make a lot of money doctoring animals. Do you know that? You see, Id send all the old women who had sick cats or dogs to you. And if they didnt get sick fast enough, I could put something in the meat I sell e
36、m to make em sick, see?” “Oh, no,” said the Doctor quickly. “You mustnt do that. That wouldnt be right.” “Oh, I didnt mean real sick,” answered the Cats-meat-Man. “Just a little something to make them droopy-like was what I had reference to. But as you say, maybe it aint quite fair on the animals. B
37、ut theyll get sick anyway, because the old women always give em too much to eat. And look, all the farmers round about who had lame horses and weak lambstheyd come. Be an animal-doctor.” When the Cats-meat-Man had gone the parrot flew off the window on to the Doctors table and said, 9 “That mans got
38、 sense. Thats what you ought to do. Be an animal-doctor. Give the silly people upif they havent brains enough to see youre the best doctor in the world. Take care of animals insteadtheyll soon find it out. Be an animal-doctor.” “Oh, there are plenty of animal-doctors,” said John Dolittle, putting th
39、e flower-pots outside on the window-sill to get the rain. “Yes, there are plenty,” said Polynesia. “But none of them are any good at all. Now listen, Doctor, and Ill tell you something. Did you know that animals can talk?” “I knew that parrots can talk,” said the Doctor. “Oh, we parrots can talk in
40、two languagespeoples language and bird-language,” said Polynesia proudly. “If I say, Polly wants a cracker, you understand me. But hear this: Ka-ka oi-ee, fee-fee?” “Good Gracious!” cried the Doctor. “What does that mean?” “That means, Is the porridge hot yet?in bird-language.” 10 “My! You dont say
41、so!” said the Doctor. “You never talked that way to me before.” “What would have been the good?” said Polynesia, dusting some cracker-crumbs off her left wing. “You wouldnt have understood me if I had.” “Tell me some more,” said the Doctor, all excited; and he rushed over to the dresser-drawer and c
42、ame back with the butchers book and a pencil. “Now dont go too fastand Ill write it down. This is interestingvery interestingsomething quite new. Give me the Birds A.B.C. firstslowly now.” So that was the way the Doctor came to know that animals had a language of their own and could talk to one anot
43、her. And all that afternoon, while it was raining, Polynesia sat on the kitchen table giving him bird words to put down in the book. At tea-time, when the dog, Jip, came in, the parrot said to the Doctor, “See, hes talking to you.” “Looks to me as though he were scratching his ear,” said the Doctor.
44、 11 “But animals dont always speak with their mouths,” said the parrot in a high voice, raising her eyebrows. “They talk with their ears, with their feet, with their tailswith everything. Sometimes they dont want to make a noise. Do you see now the way hes twitching up one side of his nose?” “Whats
45、that mean?” asked the Doctor. “That means, Cant you see that it has stopped raining?” Polynesia answered. “He is asking you a question. Dogs nearly always use their noses for asking questions.” After a while, with the parrots help, the Doctor got to learn the language of the animals so well that he
46、could talk to them himself and understand everything they said. Then he gave up being a peoples doctor altogether. As soon as the Cats-meat-Man had told every one that John Dolittle was going to become an animal-doctor, old ladies began to bring him their pet pugs and poodles who had eaten too much
47、cake; and farmers came many miles to show him sick cows and sheep. One day a plow-horse was brought to him;12 and the poor thing was terribly glad to find a man who could talk in horse-language. “You know, Doctor,” said the horse, “that vet over the hill knows nothing at all. He has been treating me
48、 six weeks nowfor spavins. What I need is spectacles. I am going blind in one eye. Theres no reason why horses shouldnt wear glasses, the same as people. But that stupid man over the hill never even looked at my eyes. He kept on giving me big pills. I tried to tell him; but he couldnt understand a word of horse-language. What I need is spectacles.” “Of courseof course,” said the Doctor. “Ill get you some at once.” “I would like a pair like yours,” said the horse“only green. Theyll keep the sun out of my eyes whil