The Last Leaf
O. Henry
In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themlves into small strips called "places." The "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street cross itlf a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppo a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himlf coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!
So, to quaint old Greenwich V illage the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth A venue, and became a "colony."
玷污怎么读
At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hôte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.
That was in May. In November a cold, unen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places."
Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick hou.
One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray eyebrow.
"She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Y our little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?"
"She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue.
"Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?"
"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."
"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promi you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten."
After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japane napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered
into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime.
Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.
She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Y oung artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.
As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horshow riding trours and a monocle of the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, veral times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.
思故乡的诗句Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward.
"Twelve," she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and "ven", almost together.
Sue look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be en, and the blank side of the brick hou twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.
"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.
"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now."
"Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie."
"Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?"
"Oh, I never heard of such nonn," complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you ud to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a gooy. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's e exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New Y ork when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can ll the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy lf."
"Y ou needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to e the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too."
"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promi me to keep your eyes clod, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand tho drawings in by to-morrow. I need the
light, or I would draw the shade down."
"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.
"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at tho silly ivy leaves."
"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as fallen statue, "becau I want to e the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loo my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of tho poor, tired leaves."
"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back."
滑雪用英语怎么说Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Mos beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had n
ever yet begun it. For veral years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by rving as a model to tho young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himlf as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above.
Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an eal that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herlf, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker.
Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiot ic imaginings.
"V ass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die becau leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bo as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. V y do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Y ohnsy."
"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. V ery well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to po for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old flibbertigibbet."
"Y ou are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not bo? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bo. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Y ohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes."
胎麻
Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his at as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.什么是磁性
When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.
"Pull it up; I want to e," she ordered, in a whisper.
Wearily Sue obeyed.
But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, with its rrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the ground.
"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time."
"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of yourlf. What would I do?"
偏偏喜欢你主题曲
But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy emed to posss her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were lood.
The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could e the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again lood, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.
幼儿园教研活动总结
When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raid.
The ivy leaf was still there.
Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.
"I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. Y ou may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook."
And hour later she said:
"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."
The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excu to go into the hallway as he left.
"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. "With good nursing you'll win." And now I must e another ca I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an a
rtist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable."专业见习报告
The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. Y ou won. Nutrition and care now - that's all."
And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very uless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all.
"I have something to tell you, white mou," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."
