A BABY TRAMP
By Ambro Bierce
If you had en little Jo standing at the street corner in the r ain,you would hardly have admired him.It was apparently an or dinary autumn rainstorm,but the water which fell upon Jo（wh
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o was hardly old enough to be either just or unjust,and so p erhaps did not come under the law of impartial distribution）appea red to have some property peculiar to itlf：one would have sai d it was dark and adhesive—sticky.But that could hardly be so,e ven in Blackburg,where things certainly did occur that were a g ood deal out of the common.
For example,ten or twelve years before,a shower of small frog s had fallen,as is credibly attested by a contemporaneous chronicl e,the record concluding with a somewhat obscure statement to t he effect that the chronicler considered it good growing-weather fo r Frenchmen.
Some years later Blackburg had a fall of crimson snow；it is col d in Blackburg when winter is on,and the snows are frequent a nd deep.There can be no doubt of it—the snow in this instan ce was of the colour of blood and melted into water of the s ame hue,if water it was,not blood.The phenomenon had attracte
d wid
e attention,and science had as many explanations as ther
e were scientists who knew nothing about it.But the men o
f Bla ckburg—men who for many years had lived right there where th e red snow fell,and might be suppod to know a good dea l about the matter—shook their heads and said somethin
complain
g woul
d com
e o
f it.
And something did,for the next summer was made memorable b
英语短文改错y the prevalence of a mysterious dia—epidemic,endemic,or th e Lord knows what,though the physicians didn't—which carried aw ay a full half of the population.Most of the other half carrie d the
mlves away and were slow to return,but finally came ba ck,and were now increasing and multiplying as before,but Blackbu rg had not since been altogether the same.
Of quite another kind,though equally“out of the common，”wa s the incident of Hetty Parlow's ghost.Hetty Parlow's maiden nam e had been Brownon,and in Blackburg that meant more than o ne would think.
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The Brownons had from time immemorial—from the very earliest o f the old colonial days—been the leading family of the town.I t was the richest and it was the best,and Blackburg would hav e shed the last drop of its plebeian blood in defence of the B rownon fair fame.As few of the family's members had ever bee
n known to live permanently away from Blackburg,although mos t of them were educated elwhere and nearly all had travelle d,there was quite a number of them.The men held most of th e public offices,and the women were foremost in all good work s.Of the latter,Hetty was most beloved by reason of the swee tness of her disposition,the purity of her character and her sing ular personal beauty.She married in Boston a young scapegrace na med Parlow,and like a good Brownon brought him to Blackbur
g forthwith and made a man and a town councillor of him.The y had a child which they name Joph and dearly loved,as wa s then the fashion among parents in all that region.Then they di ed of the mysterious disorder already mentioned,and at the ag e of one whole year Joph t up as an orphan. Unfortunately for Joph the dia which had cut off his parenteffective
暑假安全教育讲话稿s did not stop at that；it went on and extirpated nearly the wh ole Brownon contingent and its allies by marriage；and tho wh o fed did not return.The tradition was broken,the Brownon est ates pasd into alien hands,and the only Brownons remaining i n that place were underground in Oak Hill Cemetery,where,indee d,was a colony of them powerful enough to resist the encroach ment of surrounding tribes and hold the best part of the ground s.But about the ghost.
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One night,about three years after the death of Hetty Parlo
w,a number of the young people of Blackburg were passing Oa k Hill Cemetery in a wagon—if you have been there you will re member that the road to Greenton runs alongside it on the sout h.They had been attending a May Day festival at Greenton；an d that rves to fix the date.Altogether there may have bee
n a dozen,and a jolly party they were,considering the legac
y of gloom left by the town's recent sombre experiences.As the y pasd the cemetery,the man driving suddenly reined in his te am with an exclamation of surpri.It was suffciently surprising,n o doubt,for just ahead,and almost at the roadside,though insi de the cemetery,stood the ghost of Hetty Parlow.There could b
e no doubt o
f it,for she had been personally known to ever y youth and maiden in the party.That established the thing's identi ty；its character as ghost was signifed by all the customary signs —the shroud,the long,undone hair,the‘far-away look'—everything.T his disquietin
g apparition was stretching out its arms toward th
e west,as i
f in supplication for the evenin
g star,which,certainl y,was an alluring object,thoug
h obviously out of reach.As the
y all sat silent（so the story goes）every member of that party o f merrymakers—they had merry made on coffee and lemonade only
—distinctly heard that ghost call the name‘Joey,Joey！'A momen t later nothing was there.Of cour one does not have to believ e all that.
Now,at that moment,as was afterward ascertained,Joey was wa ndering about in the sagebrush on the opposite side of the conti nent,near Winnemucca,in the State of Nevada.He had been ta ken to that town by some good persons distantly related to hi s dead father,and by them adopted and tenderly cared for.But o n that evening the poor child had strayed from home and wa
s lost in the dert.
His after history is involved in obscurity and has gaps which conj ecture alone can fll.It is known that he was found by a famil y of Piute Indians,who kept the little wretch with them fo
r a time and then sold him—actually sold him for money t
o a woman on one of the east-bound trains,at a station a lo ng way from Winnemucca.The woman profesd to have made al l manner of inquiries,but all in vain：so,being childless an
analysis是什么意思d a widow,sh
e adopted him herlf.At this point o
sunlike
f his career J o emed to be gettin
g a long way from the condition of orp
h anage；the interposition of a multitude of parents between himl f and that woeful state promid him a long immunity from it
s disadvantages.
Mrs.Darnell,his newest mother,lived in Cleveland,Ohio.But he
r adopted son did not long remain with her.He was en one a fternoon by a policeman,new to that beat,deliberately toddling a way from her hou,and being questioned answered that he was “a doin'home.”He must have travelled by rail,somehow,for thre e days later he was in the town of Whiteville,which,as yo
u know,is a long way from Blackburg.His clothing was in prett
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y fair condition,but he was sinfully dirty.Unable to give any acco unt of himlf he was arrested as a vagrant and ntenced to i mprisonment in the Infants'Sheltering Home—where he was washed. Jo ran away from the Infants'Sheltering Home at Whiteville—just to ok to the woods one day,and the Home knew him no more f or ever.
We find him next,or rather get back to him,standing forlorn i n the cold autumn rain at a suburban street corner in Blackbur g；and it ems right to explain now that the raindrops falling u pon him there were really not dark and gummy；they only faile d to make his face and hands less so.Jo was indeed fearfull
y and wonderfully besmirched,as by the hand of an artist.And t he forlorn little tramp had no shoes；his feet were bare,red,an d swollen,and when he walked he limped with both legs.As t
o clothing—ah,you would hardly have had the skill to name an y single garment that he wore,or say by what magic he kep
t it upon him.That he was cold all over and all through did n ot admit of a doubt；he knew it himlf.Anyone would have bee n cold there that evening；but,for that reason,no one el wa s there.How Jo came to be there himlf,he could not for th e flickering little life of him have told,even i
f gifted with a vo cabulary exceeding a hundred words.From the way he stared abou t him one could have en that he had not the faintest notio n of where（nor why）he was.
Yet he was not altogether a fool in his day and generation；bein g cold and hungry,and still able to walk a little by bending hi s knees very much indeed and putting his feet down toes firs t,he decided to enter one of the hous which flanked the str eet at long intervals and looked so bright and warm.But whe
