杀死一只知更鸟经典段落英文摘抄欣赏 During his first five years in Maycomb, Atticus practiced economy more than anything;for several years thereafter he invested his earnings in his brother’s education. JohnHale Finch was ten years younger than my father, and chose to study medicine at atime when cotton was not worth growing; but after getting Uncle Jack started, Atticusderived a reasonable income from the law. He liked Maycomb, he was MaycombCounty born and bred; he knew his people, they knew him, and because of SimonFinch’s industry, Atticus was related by blood or marriage to nearly every family in thetown. Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainyweather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthousesagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’sday; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the liveoaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathedbefore noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes withfrostings of sweat and sweet talcum. People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of thestores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long butseemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and nomoney to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But itwas a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recentlybeen told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself. Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence. She was a Graham fromMontgomery; Atticus met her when he was first elected to the state legislature. He wasmiddle-aged then, she was fifteen years his junior. Jem was the product of their firstyear of marriage; four years later I was born, and two years later our mother died from asudden heart attack. They said it ran in her family. I did not miss her, but I think Jem did. He remembered her clearly, and sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh atlength, then go off and play by himself behind the car-house. When he was like that, Iknew better than to bother him. When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries withincalling distance of Calpurnia were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house two doors tothe north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south. We were never temptedto break them. The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the meredescription of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end; Mrs. Dubose wasplain hell. Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid nocturnal events: people’s chickensand household pets were found mutilated; although the culprit was Crazy Addie, whoeventually drowned himself in Barker’s Eddy, people still looked at the Radley Place,unwilling to discard their initial suspicions. A Negro would not pass the Radley Place atnight, he would cut across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked. TheMaycomb school grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radleychickenyard tall pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts layuntouched by the children: Radley pecans would kill you. A baseball hit into the Radleyyard was a lost ball and no questions asked. The misery of that house began many years before Jem and I were born. TheRadleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilection unforgivable inMaycomb. They did not go to church, Maycomb’s principal recreation, but worshiped athome; Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street for a mid-morning coffee break withher neighbors, and certainly never joined a missionary circle. Mr. Radley walked to townat eleven-thirty every morning and came back promptly at twelve, sometimes carrying abrown paper bag that the neighborhood assumed contained the family groceries. I neverknew how old Mr. Radley made his living—Jem said he “bought cotton,” a polite term fordoing nothing—but Mr. Radley and his wife had lived there with their two sons as longas anybody could remember. 感谢您的阅读，祝您生活愉快。 本文来源：https://www.wddqw.com/doc/2628e60b4228915f804d2b160b4e767f5acf808d.html