查爾斯·蘭姆/ Charles Lamb
查爾斯·蘭姆（1775—1834），英國最傑出的小品文作家、散文家。因家境貧寒，15歲便輟學謀生，供職於東印度公司長達32年之久。蘭姆十分讚賞浪漫主義思潮中人性主義的主張，並把這些用於自己溫情款款的個性化散文創作。同時，他也熱愛城市生活，善於用敏銳獨特的眼光捕捉市井生活中變幻的都市風情。他對英國文學的真正貢獻來自於他後期的《伊裏亞隨筆》，其豐富的情趣和精妙的表述為蘭姆贏得了英國散文創作中首屈一指的地位。
Ace in the Hole
Understand these new words before you read this article.
1. adjoining [?'d??ini?] adj. 鄰接的
2. apparition [,?p?'ri??n] n. 靈魂
3. marble ['mɑ:bl] n. 大理石
Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle or great-aunt, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa lived) which had been the scene—so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country—of the tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts; till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon it. HereAlice put out one of her dear mother’s looks, too tender to be called upbraiding.
Then I went on to say, how religious and how good their great-grandmother Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody, though she was not indeed the mistress of this greenhouse, but had only the charge of it(and yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner’s other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.’s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say,“that would be foolish indeed.”And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neighborhood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory, because she had been such a good and religious woman’s good indeed that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, aye, and a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her hands.