英文经典：远大前程-Great Expectations

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Chapter 1 (an excerpt)

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian¹ name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit² than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

 

I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister,—Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness³ of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably⁴ derived⁵ from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout⁶, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription⁷, “Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,” I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled⁸ and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine,—who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle,—I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

 

Ours was the marsh⁹ country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable¹⁰ raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak¹¹ place overgrown with nettles¹² was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness¹³ beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds¹⁴ and gates, with scattered¹⁵ cattle feeding on it, was the marshes¹⁶; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage¹⁷ lair¹⁸ from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.

 

“Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. “Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!”

 

A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered¹⁹ in mud, and lamed²⁰ by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled²¹; and whose teeth chattered²² in his head as he seized me by the chin.

 

“Oh! Don’t cut my throat, sir,” I pleaded in terror. “Pray don’t do it, sir.”

 

“Tell us your name!” said the man. “Quick!”

 

“Pip, sir.”

 

WordChecker

explicit (adjective): clear

derive (verb): to originate from

inscription (noun): words written on a monument or inside a book cover

indebted (adjective): grateful

leaden (adjective): dull; lacking in life

savage (adjective): fierce; wild

lame (verb): to cause a living thing to be unable to move well

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