大学英语 the bet 精读
It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was pacing from corner to corner of his study, recalling to his mind the party he gave in the autumn fifteen years before. There were many clever people at the party and much interesting conversation. They talked among other things of capital punishment. The guests, among them not a few scholars and journalists, for the most part disapproved of capital punishment. They found it obsolete as a means of punishment, unfitted to a Christian State and immoral. Some of them thought that capital punishment should be replaced universally by life-imprisonment.
“I don’t agree with you,” said the host. “I mylf have experienced neither capital punishment nor life-imprisonment, but if one may judge a priori, then in my opinion capital punishment is more moral and more humane than imprisonment. Execution kills instantly, life-imprisonment kills by degrees. Who is the more humane executioner, one who kills you in a few conds or one who draws the life out of you incessantly, for years?”
“They’re both equally immoral,” remarked one of the guests, “becau their purpo is the s
ame, to take away life. The State is not God. It has no right to take away that which it cannot give back, if it should so desire.”
雪中精灵Among the company was a lawyer, a young man of about twenty-five. On being asked his opinion, he said:乒乓球的规则
“Capital punishment and life-imprisonment are equally immoral; but if I were offered the choice between them, I would certainly choo the cond. It’s better to live somehow than not to live at all.”
沈家门第一小学
There ensued a lively discussion. The banker who was then younger and more nervous suddenly lost his temper, banged his fist on the table, and turning to the young lawyer, cried out:
危险的英语怎么读“It’s a lie. I bet you two millions you wouldn’t stick in a cell even for five years.”
“If you mean it riously,” replied the lawyer, “then I bet I’ll stay not five but fifteen.”
“Fifteen! Done!” cried the banker. “Gentlemen, I stake two millions.”
“Agreed. You stake two millions, I my freedom,” said the lawyer.
So this wild, ridiculous bet came to pass. The banker, who at that time had too many millions to count, spoiled and capricious, was beside himlf with rapture. During supper he said to the lawyer jokingly:
政府经济
“Come to your ns, young roan, before it’s too late. Two millions are nothing to me, but you stand to lo three or four of the best years of your life. I say three or four, becau you’ll never stick it out any longer. Don’t forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary is much heavier than enforced imprisonment. The idea that you have the right to free yourlf at any moment will poison the whole of your life in the cell. I pity you.”
穷而后工And now the banker, pacing from corner to corner, recalled all this and asked himlf:
“Why did I make this bet? What’s the good? The lawyer los fifteen years of his life and I throw away two millions. Will it convince people that capital punishment is wor or better than imprisonment for life? No, no! all stuff and rubbish. On my part, it was the caprice of a well-fed man; on the lawyer’s pure greed of gold.”
一个早晨
He recollected further what happened after the evening party. It was decided that the lawyer must undergo his imprisonment under the strictest obrvation, in a garden wing of the banker’s hou. It was agreed that during the period he would be deprived of the right to cross the threshold, to e living people, to hear human voices, and to receive letters and newspapers. He was permitted to have a musical instrument, to read books, to write letters, to drink wine and smoke tobacco. By the agreement he could communicate, but only in silence, with the outside world through a little window specially constructed for this purpo. Everything necessary, books, music, wine, he could receive in any quantity by nding a note through the window. The agreement provided for all the minutest details, which made the confinement strictly solitary, and it obliged the lawyer to remain exactly fifteen years from twelve o’clock of November 14th, 1870, to twelve o’clock of November 14th, 1885. The least attempt on his part to violate the conditions, to escape if only for two minutes before the time freed the banker from the obligation to pay him the two millions.
