To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee (1926--)
1
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The miry of that hou began many years before Jem and I were born. The Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themlves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb. They did not go to church, Maycomb’s principal recreation, but worshipped at home; Mrs R
adley ldom if ever crosd the street for a mid-morning coffee break with her neighbours and certainly never joined a missionary circle. Mr Radley walked to town at eleven-thirty every morning and came back promptly at twelve, sometimes carrying a brown paper bag that the neighbourhood assumed contained the family groceries. I never knew how old Mr Bradley made his living参芪颗粒的功效与作用—Jem said he ‘bought cotton’, a polite term for doing nothing—but Mr Bradley and his wife had lived there with their two sons as long as anybody could remember.
象棋大战
The shutters and doors of the Radley hou were clod on Sundays, another thing alien to Maycomb’耀武扬威的近义词s Ways: clod doors meant illness and cold weather only. Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore corts, men wore coats, children wore shoes. But to climb the Radley front steps and call, ‘He-y’, of a Sunday afternoon was something their neighbours never did. The Radley hou had no screen doors. I once asked Atticus if it ever had any; Atticus said yes, but before I was born.
According to neighbourhood legend, when the younger Radley boy was in his teens he b
ecame acwuainted with some of the Cumminghams from Old Sarum, an enormous and confusing tribe domiciled in the northern part of the country, and they formed the nearest thing to a gang ever en in Maycomb. They did little, but enough to be discusd by the town and publicly warned from three pulpits: they hung, around the barber-shop; they rode the bus to Abbotsville on Sundays and went to the picture show; they attended dances at the country’s riverside gambling hell, the Dew-Drop Inn and Fishing Camp; they experimented with stumphole whisky. Nobody in Maycomb had nerve enough to tell Mr Radley that his boy was in with the wrong crowd.
One night in an excessive spurt of high spirits, the boys backed around the square in a borrowed flivver, resisted arrest by Maycomb’s ancient beadle, Mr Conner, and locked him in the court-hou. The Town decide something had to be done; Mr Conner said he knew who each and every one of them was, and he was bound and determined they wouldn’湛东升t get away with it, so the boys came before the probate judge on charges of disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, assault and battery, and using abusive and profane language in the prence and hearing of a female. The judge asked Mr Conner
why he included the last charge; Mr Conner said they cusd so loud he was sure every lady in Maycomb heard them. The judge decided to nd the boys to the state industrial school, where boys were sometimes nt for no other reason than to provide them with food and decent shelter: it was no prison and it was no disgrace. Mr Bradley would e to it that Arthur gave no further trouble. Knowing that Mr Radley’治保s word was his bond, the judge was glad to do so.
The other boys attended the industrial school and received the best condary education to be had in the state; one of them eventually worked his way through engineering school at Auburn. The doors of the Radley hou were clod on weekdays as well as Sundays, and Mr Radley’s boy was not en again for fifteen years.
But there came a day, barely within Jem’s memory, when Boo Bradley was heard from and was en by veral people, but not by Jem. He said Atticus never talked much about the Radleys: when Jem would question him Atticus’s only answer was for him to mind his own business and let the Radleys mind theirs, they had a right to; but when it happened Jem said Atticus shook his head and said, ‘Mm, mm, mm.’
So Jem received most of his information from Miss Stephanie Crawford, a neighbourhood scold, who said she knew the whole thing. According to Miss Stephanie, Boo was sitting in the living room cutting some items from the Maycomb Tribute to paste in his scrapbook. His father entered the room. As Mr Radley pasd by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities.
Mrs Radley ran screaming into the street that Arthur was killing them all, but when the sheriff arrived he found Boo still sitting in the living room, cutting up the Tribute. 端午节的画He was thirty-three years old then.
Miss Stephanie said old Radley said no Radley was going to any asylum, when it was suggested that a ason in Tuscaloosa might be helpful to Boo. Boo wasn’吃螃蟹的禁忌t crazy, he was high-strung at times. It was all right to shut him up, Mr Radley conceded, but insisted that Boo not be charged with anything: he was not a criminal. The sheriff hadn’t the heart to put him in jail alongside Negroes, so Boo was locked in the court-hou bament,
Boo’s transition from the bament to back home was nebulous in Jem’s Memory. Miss Stephanie Crawford said some of the town council told Radley that if he didn’t take Boo back, Boo would die of mould from the damp. Besides, Boo could not live for ever on the bounty of the country.
