The Acorn Gatherer
RICHARD JEFFERIES
Black rooks, yellow oak leaves, and a boy asleep at the foot of the tree. His head was lying on a bulging root clo to the stem: his feet reached to a small sack or bag half full of acorns. In his slumber his forehead frowned—they were fixed lines, like the grooves in the oak bark. There was nothing el in his features attractive or repellent: they were such as might have belonged to a dozen hedge children. The t angry frown was the only distinguishing mark—like the dents on a penny made by a hobnail boot, by which it can be known from twenty otherwi precily similar. His clothes were little better than sacking, but clean, tidy, and repaired. Any one would have said, "Poor, but carefully tended." A kind heart might have put a three penny-bit in his clenched little fist, and sighed. But that iron t frown on the young brow would not have unbent even for the silver. Caw! Caw!
The happiest creatures in the world are the rooks at the acorns. It is not only the eating of
新颖的自我介绍them, but the finding: the fluttering up there and hopping from branch to branch, the sidling out to the extreme end of the bough, and the inward chuckling when a friend lets his acorn drop tip-tap from bough to bough. Amid such plenty they cannot quarrel or fight, having no cau of battle, but they can boast of success, and do so to the loudest of their voices. He who has lected a choice one flies with it as if it were a nugget in his beak, out to some open spot of ground, followed by a general Caw!打扫卫生日记>我的抗疫日记
项目总监岗位职责This was going on above while the boy slept below. A thrush looked out from the hedge, and among the short grass there was still the hum of bees, constant sun-worshippers as they are. The sunshine gleamed on the rooks' black feathers overhead, and on the sward sparkled from hawkweed, some lotus and yellow weed, as from a faint ripple of water. The oak was near a comer formed by two hedges, and in the angle was a narrow thorny gap, prently an old woman, very upright came through this gap carrying a faggot on her shoulder and a stout ash stick in her hand. She was very clean, well dresd for a labouring woman, hard of feature, but superior in some scarcely defined way to most of her class. The upright carriage had something to do with it, the firm mouth, the light blue
eyes that looked every one straight in the face. Possibly the, however, had less effect than her conscious righteousness. Her religion lifted her above the rest, and I do assure you that it was perfectly genuine. That hard face and cotton gown would have gone to the stake.
摄影摄像技术When she had got through the gap she put the faggot down in it, walked a short distance out into the field, and came back towards the boy, keeping him between her and the corner. Caw! said the rooks, Caw! Caw! Thwack, thwack, bang, went the ash stick on the sleeping boy, heavily enough to bare broken his bones. Like a piece of machinery suddenly let loo, without a cond of dubious awakening and without a cry, he darted straight for the gap in the corner, There the faggot stopped him, and before he could tear it away the old woman had him again, thwack, thwack, and one last stinging Slash across his legs as he doubled past her. Quick as the wind as he rushed he picked up the bag of acorns and pitched it into the mound, where the acorns rolled down into a pond and were lost—a good round shilling's worth. Then across the field, without his cap, over the rising ground, and out of sight. The old woman made no attempt to hold him, knowing from prev
ious experience that it was uless, and would probably result in her own overthrow. The faggot, brought a quarter of a mile for the purpo, enabled her, you e, to get two good chances at him.慈禧与光绪
A wickeder boy never lived: nothing could be done with the reprobate. He was her grandson -- at least, the son of her daughter, for he was not legitimate. The man drank, the girl died, as was believed, of sheer starvation: the granny kept the child, and he was now between ten and eleven years old. She had done and did her duty, as she understood it. A prayer meeting was held in her cottage twice a week, she prayed her lf aloud among them, she was a leading member of the ct. Neither example, precept, nor the rod could change that boy's heart. In time perhaps she got lo beat him from habit rather 'than from any particular anger of the moment, just as she fetched water and filled her kettle, as one of the ordinary events of the day. Why did not the father interfere? Becau if so he would have had to keep his son: so many shillings a week the less for ale.
In the garden attached to the cottage there was a small shed with a padlock, ud to store produce or wood in. One morning, after a vere beating, she drove the boy in there and locked him in the whole day without food. It was no u, he was as hardened as ever.
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A footpath which crosd the field went by the cottage and every Sunday tho who were walking to church could e the boy in the window with granny's Bible open before him. There he had to sit, the door locked, under terror of stick, and study the page. What was the u of compelling him to do that? He could not read. "No," said the old woman, "he won't read, but I makes him look at his book. "
The thwacking went on for some time, when one day the boy was nt on an errand two or three miles, and for a wonder started willingly enough. At night he did not return, nor the next day, nor the next, and it was as clear as possible that he had run away. No one thought of tracking his footsteps, or following up the path he had to take, which pasd a railway, brooks, and a canal. He had run away, and he might stop away: it was beautiful s
ummer weather, and it would do him no harm to stop out for a week. A dealer who had business in a field by the canal thought indeed that he saw something in the water, but he did not want any trouble, nor indeed did he know that some one was missing. Most likely a dead dog; so he turned his hack and went to look again at the cow he thought of buying. A barge came by, and the steerswoman, with a pipe in her mouth, saw something roll over and come up under the rudder the length of the barge having pasd over it. She knew what it was, but she wanted to reach the wharf and go ashore and have a quart of ale. No u picking it up, only making a mess on deck, there was no reward—"Gee-up! Neddy. " The barge went on, turning up the mud in the shallow water, nding ripples washing up to the grassy meadow shores, while the moorhens hid in the flags till it was gone. In time a labourer walking on the towing-path saw " it, " and fished it out, and with it a slender ash sapling, with twine and hook, a worm still on it. This was why the dead boy had gone so willingly, thinking to fish in the "river", :as he called the canal. When his feet slipped and he fell in, his fishing-line somehow became twisted about his arms and legs, el most likely he would have scrambled out, as it was not very deep. Th
秋天有什么花开放is was the end; nor was he even remembered. Does any one sorrow for the rook, shot, and hung up as a scarecrow? The boy had been talked to, and held up as a scarecrow all his life: he was dead, and that is all. As for granny, she felt no twinge: she had done her duty.
