[雷蒙·斯尼奇的不幸历险]第一集 The Bad Beginning第1课

　　A Serious of Unfortunte EventsBOOK the FirstTHE BAD BEGINNINGby LEMONY SNICKETTo Beatrice-darling, dearest, deadCHAPTER OneIf you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the  middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife¹ with misfortune, misery², and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.

　　Their misfortune began one day at Briny³ Beach. The three Baudelaire children lived with their parents in an enormous mansion⁴ at the heart of a dirty and busy city and occasionally their parents gave them permission to take  a rickety trolley-the word "ricket," you probably know, here means "unsteady" or "likely to collapse"-alone to the seashore, where they would spend the day as a sort of vocation⁵ as long as they were home for dinner. This particular morning it was gray and cloudy, which didn't bother the Baudelaire youngsters one bit. When it was hot and sunny, Briny Beach was crowded with tourists and it was impossible to find a good place to lay one's blanket. One gray and cloudy days, the Baudelaires had the beach to themselves to do what they liked.

　　Violet Baudelaire, the eldest⁶, liked to skip rocks. Like most fourteen-year-olds, she was right-handed, so the rocks skipped farther across the murky⁷ water when Violet used her right hand than when she used her left. As she skipped rocks, she was looking out at the horrizon and thinking about an invention she wanted to build. Anyone who knew Violet well could tell she was thinking hard, because her long hair was tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes. Violet had a real knack⁸ for inventing and building strange devices, so her brain was often filled with images of pulleys, levers, and gears, and she never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair. This morning she was thinking about how to construct a device that could retrieve⁹ a rock after you had skipped it into ocean.

　　Klaus Baudelaire, the middle child, and the only boy, liked to examine creatures in tidepools. Klaus was a little older than twelve and wore glasses, which made him look intelligent. He was intelligent. The Baudelaire parents had an enormous library in their mansion, a room fillded with thousands of books on nearly every subject. Being only twelve, Klaus of course had not read all of the books in the Baudelaire library, but he had read a great many of them and had retained a lot of the information form his readings. He knew how to tell an alligator¹⁰ from a crocodile. He knew who killed Julius Caesar. And he knew much about the tiny, slimy, animals found at Briny Beach, which he was examining now.

　　本文本由ivinli813网友听写，非常感谢他的分享。如有错误，欢迎指出。

1 rife   

adj.(指坏事情)充斥的，流行的，普遍的

参考例句：

• Disease is rife in the area.疾病在这一区很流行。
• Corruption was rife before the election.选举之前腐败盛行。

2 misery   

n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦

参考例句：

• Business depression usually causes misery among the working class.商业不景气常使工薪阶层受苦。
• He has rescued me from the mire of misery.他把我从苦海里救了出来。

3 briny   

adj.盐水的；很咸的；n.海洋

参考例句：

• The briny water is not good for the growth of the trees.海水不利于这种树木的生长。
• The briny air gave a foretaste of the nearby sea.咸空气是快近海的前兆。

4 mansion   

n.大厦，大楼；宅第

参考例句：

• The old mansion was built in 1850.这座古宅建于1850年。
• The mansion has extensive grounds.这大厦四周的庭园广阔。

5 vocation   

n.职业，行业

参考例句：

• She struggled for years to find her true vocation.她多年来苦苦寻找真正适合自己的职业。
• She felt it was her vocation to minister to the sick.她觉得照料病人是她的天职。

6 eldest   

adj.最年长的，最年老的

参考例句：

• The King's eldest son is the heir to the throne.国王的长子是王位的继承人。
• The castle and the land are entailed on the eldest son.城堡和土地限定由长子继承。

7 murky   

adj.黑暗的，朦胧的；adv.阴暗地，混浊地；n.阴暗；昏暗

参考例句：

• She threw it into the river's murky depths.她把它扔进了混浊的河水深处。
• She had a decidedly murky past.她的历史背景令人捉摸不透。

8 knack   

n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法

参考例句：

• He has a knack of teaching arithmetic.他教算术有诀窍。
• Making omelettes isn't difficult,but there's a knack to it.做煎蛋饼并不难，但有窍门。

9 retrieve   

vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索

参考例句：

• He was determined to retrieve his honor.他决心恢复名誉。
• The men were trying to retrieve weapons left when the army abandoned the island.士兵们正试图找回军队从该岛撤退时留下的武器。

10 alligator   

n.短吻鳄(一种鳄鱼)

参考例句：

• She wandered off to play with her toy alligator.她开始玩鳄鱼玩具。
• Alligator skin is five times more costlier than leather.鳄鱼皮比通常的皮革要贵5倍。