愛德華·凡爾拉萊·盧卡斯/ Edward Verrall Lucas
愛德華·凡爾拉萊·盧卡斯(1868—1938).英國知名多產作家，以幽默諷刺的創作特點聞名於世。
Ace in the Hole
Understand these new words before you read this article.
1. tenant ['ten?nt] n. 房客
2. polished ['p?li?t] adj. 擦亮的
3. racket ['r?kit] n. 喧鬧
4. inanition [,in?'ni??n] n. 空虛
Chance recently made me for a while the tenant of a windmill. Not to live in, and unhappily not to grind corn in, but to visit as the mood arose, and see the ships in the harbour from the topmost window, and look down on the sheep and the green world all around. For this mill stands high and white—so white, indeed, that when there is a thunder-cloud behind it, it seems a thing of polished aluminium.
From its windows you can see four other mills, all like itself, idle, and one merely a ruin and one with only two sweeps left. But just over the next range of hills, out of sight, to the northeast, is a windmill that still merrily goes, and about five miles away to the northwest is another also active; so that things are not quite so bad hereabouts as in many parts of the country, where the good breezes blow altogether in vain...
Thinking over the losses which England has had forced upon her by steam and the ingenuity of the engineer, one is disposed to count the decay of the windmill among the first. Perhaps in the matter of pure picture squeness the most serious thing that ever happened to England was the discovery of galvanized iron roofing; but, after all, there was never anything but quiet and rich and comfortable beauty about red roofs, whereas the living windmill is not only beautiful but romantic too: a willing, man-serving creature, yoked to the elements, a whirling monster, often a thing of terror. No one can stand very near the crashing sweeps of a windmill in half a gale without a tightening of the heart a feeling comparable to that which comes from watching the waves break over a wall in a storm. And to be within the mill at such a time is to know something of sound’s very sources; it is the cave of noise itself. No doubt there are dens of hammering energy which are more shattering, but the noise of a windmill is largely natural, the product of wood striving with the good sou’wester; it fills the ears rather than assaults them. The effect, moreover, is by no means lessened by the absence of the wind itself and the silent nonchalance of the miller and his man, who move about in the midst of this appalling racket with the quiet efficiency of vergers.