G634-MOTHER-作者：Owen Wister-出版社：学苑音像出版社-出版时间：2005-08-01 Owen Wister.pdf

MOTHER MOTHER By OWEN WISTER TO MY FAVOURITE BROKER WITH THE EARNEST ASSURANCE THAT MR. BEVERLY IS NOT MEANT FOR HIM 1 MOTHER When handsome young Richard Field--he was very handsome and very young-- announced to our assembled company that if his turn should really come to tell us a story, the story should be no invention of his fancy, but a page of truth, a chapter from his own life, in which himself was the hero and a lovely, innocent girl was the heroine, his wife at once looked extremely uncomfortable. She changed the reclining position in which she had been leaning back in her chair, and she sat erect, with a hand closed upon each arm of the chair. Richard, she said. do you think that it is right of you to tell any one, even friends, anything that you have never yet confessed to me? Ethel, replied Richard, although I cannot promise that you will be entirely proud of my conduct when you have heard this episode of my past, I do say that there is nothing in it to hurt the trust you have placed in me since I have been your husband. Only, he added, I hope that I shall not have to tell any story at all. Oh, yes you will! we all exclaimed together; and the men looked eager while the women sighed. The rest of us were much older than Richard, we were middle-aged, in fact; and human nature is so constructed, that when it is at the age when making love keeps it busy, it does not care so much to listen to tales of others love-making; but the more it recedes from that period of exuberance, and ceases to have love adventures of its own, the greater become its hunger and thirst to hear about this delicious business which it can no longer personally practice