My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror

中文名：
玛格丽特阿姨的镜子
作者：
瓦尔特·司各特 Sir Walter Scott
类型：
小说经典
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玛格丽特阿姨的镜子(My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror)简介：
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AUNT MARGARET'S MIRROR.

"There are times
When Fancy plays her gambols, in despite
Even of our watchful senses--when in sooth
Substance seems shadow, shadow substance seems--
When the broad, palpable, and mark'd partition
'Twixt that which is and is not seems dissolved,
As if the mental eye gain'd power to gaze
Beyond the limits of the existing world.
Such hours of shadowy dreams I better love
Than all the gross realities of life." ANONYMOUS.

My Aunt Margaret was one of that respected sisterhood upon whom devolve
all the trouble and solicitude incidental to the possession of children,
excepting only that which attends their entrance into the world. We were
a large family, of very different dispositions and constitutions. Some
were dull and peevish--they were sent to Aunt Margaret to be amused;
some were rude, romping, and boisterous--they were sent to Aunt Margaret
to be kept quiet, or rather that their noise might be removed out of
hearing; those who were indisposed were sent with the prospect of being
nursed; those who were stubborn, with the hope of their being subdued by
the kindness of Aunt Margaret's discipline;--in short, she had all
the various duties of a mother, without the credit and dignity of the
maternal character. The busy scene of her various cares is now over.
Of the invalids and the robust, the kind and the rough, the peevish and
pleased children, who thronged her little parlour from morning to night,
not one now remains alive but myself, who, afflicted by early infirmity,
was one of the most delicate of her nurslings, yet, nevertheless, have
outlived them all.

It is still my custom, and shall be so while I have the use of my limbs,
to visit my respected relation at least three times a week. Her abode is
about half a mile from the suburbs of the town in which I reside, and
is accessible, not only by the highroad, from which it stands at some
distance, but by means of a greensward footpath leading through some
pretty meadows. I have so little left to torment me in life, that it is
one of my greatest vexations to know that several of these sequestered
fields have been devoted as sites for building. In that which is nearest
the town, wheelbarrows have been at work for several weeks in such
numbers, that, I verily believe, its whole surface, to the depth of
at least eighteen inches, was mounted in these monotrochs at the same
moment, and in the act of being transported from one place to another.
Huge triangular piles of planks are also reared in different parts of
the devoted messuage; and a little group of trees that still grace the
eastern end, which rises in a gentle ascent, have just received warning
to quit, expressed by a daub of white paint, and are to give place to a
curious grove of chimneys.

It would, perhaps, hurt others in my situation to reflect that this
little range of pasturage once belonged to my father (whose family was
of some consideration in the world), and was sold by patches to remedy
distresses in which he involved himself in an attempt by commercial
adventure to redeem his diminished fortune. While the building scheme
was in full operation, this circumstance was often pointed out to me by
the class of friends who are anxious that no part of your misfortunes
should escape your observation. "Such pasture-ground!--lying at the very
town's end--in turnips and potatoes, the parks would bring L20 per acre;
and if leased for building--oh, it was a gold mine! And all sold for
an old song out of the ancient possessor's hands!" My comforters cannot
bring me to repine much on this subject.

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