Those were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So very great is the improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration. The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any other learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities; neither was Mr. Stryver, already fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative practice, behind his compeers in this particular, any more than in the drier parts of the legal race.
A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, Mr. Stryver had begun cautiously to hew away the lower staves of the ladder on which he mounted. Sessions and Old Bailey had now to summon their favourite, specially, to their longing arms; and shouldering itself towards the visage of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King’s Bench, the florid countenance of Mr. Stryver might be daily seen, bursting out of the bed of wigs, like a great sunflower pushing its way at the sun from among a rank garden-full of flaring companions.
It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr. Stryver was a glib man, and an unscrupulous, and a ready, and a bold, he had not that faculty of extracting the essence from a heap of statements, which is among the most striking and necessary of the advocate’s accomplishments. But, a remarkable improvement came upon him as to this. The more business he got, the greater his power seemed to grow of getting at its pith and marrow; and however late at night he sat carousing with Sydney Carton, he always had his points at his fingers’ ends in the morning.
Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was Stryver’s great ally. What the two drank together, between Hilary Term and Michaelmas, might have floated a king’s ship. Stryver never had a case in hand, anywhere, but Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling of the court; they went the same Circuit, and even there they prolonged their usual orgies late into the night, and Carton was rumoured to be seen at broad day, going home stealthily and unsteadily to his lodgings, like a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about, among such as were interested in the matter, that although Sydney Carton would never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that he rendered suit and service to Stryver in that humble capacity.
“Ten o’clock, sir,” said the man at the tavern, whom he had charged to wake him—”ten o’clock, sir.”
“WHAT’S the matter?”
“Ten o’clock, sir.”
“What do you mean? Ten o’clock at night?”
“Yes, sir. Your honour told me to call you.”
“Oh! I remember. Very well, very well.”
After a few dull efforts to get to sleep again, which the man dexterously combated by stirring the fire continuously for five minutes, he got up, tossed his hat on, and walked out. He turned into the Temple, and, having revived himself by twice pacing the pavements of King’s Bench-walk and Paper-buildings, turned into the Stryver chambers.
The Stryver clerk, who never assisted at these conferences, had gone home, and the Stryver principal opened the door. He had his slippers on, and a loose bed-gown, and his throat was bare for his greater ease. He had that rather wild, strained, seared marking about the eyes, which may be observed in all free livers of his class, from the portrait of Jeffries downward, and which can be traced, under various disguises of Art, through the portraits of every Drinking Age.
“You are a little late, Memory,” said Stryver.
“About the usual time; it may be a quarter of an hour later.”
They went into a dingy room lined with books and littered with papers, where there was a blazing fire. A kettle steamed upon the hob, and in the midst of the wreck of papers a table shone, with plenty of wine upon it, and brandy, and rum, and sugar, and lemons.
“You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sydney.”
“Two to-night, I think. I have been dining with the day’s client; or seeing him dine—it’s all one!”
“That was a rare point, Sydney, that you brought to bear upon the identification. How did you come by it? When did it strike you?”
“I thought he was rather a handsome fellow, and I thought I should have been much the same sort of fellow, if I had had any luck.”
Mr. Stryver laughed till he shook his precocious paunch.
“You and your luck, Sydney! Get to work, get to work.”
Sullenly enough, the jackal loosened his dress, went into an adjoining room, and came back with a large jug of cold water, a basin, and a towel or two. Steeping the towels in the water, and partially wringing them out, he folded them on his head in a manner hideous to behold, sat down at the table, and said, “Now I am ready!”
“Not much boiling down to be done to-night, Memory,” said Mr. Stryver, gaily, as he looked among his papers.
“How much?”
“Only two sets of them.”
“Give me the worst first.”
“There they are, Sydney. Fire away!”
The lion then composed himself on his back on a sofa on one side of the drinking-table, while the jackal sat at his own paper-bestrewn table proper, on the other side of it, with the bottles and glasses ready to his hand. Both resorted to the drinking-table without stint, but each in a different way; the lion for the most part reclining with his hands in his waistband, looking at the fire, or occasionally flirting with some lighter document; the jackal, with knitted brows and intent face, so deep in his task, that his eyes did not even follow the hand he stretched out for his glass—which often groped about, for a minute or more, before it found the glass for his lips. Two or three times, the matter in hand became so knotty, that the jackal found it imperative on him to get up, and steep his towels anew. From these pilgrimages to the jug and basin, he returned with such eccentricities of damp headgear as no words can describe; which were made the more ludicrous by his anxious gravity.
At length the jackal had got together a compact repast for the lion, and proceeded to offer it to him. The lion took it with care and caution, made his selections from it, and his remarks upon it, and the jackal assisted both. When the repast was fully discussed, the lion put his hands in his waistband again, and lay down to mediate. The jackal then invigorated himself with a bum for his throttle, and a fresh application to his head, and applied himself to the collection of a second meal; this was administered to the lion in the same manner, and was not disposed of until the clocks struck three in the morning.
“And now we have done, Sydney, fill a bumper of punch,” said Mr. Stryver.
The jackal removed the towels from his head, which had been steaming again, shook himself, yawned, shivered, and complied.
“You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those crown witnesses to-day. Every question told.”
“I always am sound; am I not?”
“I don’t gainsay it. What has roughened your temper? Put some punch to it and smooth it again.”
With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.
“The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School,” said Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the past, “the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now in spirits and now in despondency!”
“Ah!” returned the other, sighing: “yes! The same Sydney, with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and seldom did my own.
“And why not?”
“God knows. It was my way, I suppose.”
He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out before him, looking at the fire.
“Carton,” said his friend, squaring himself at him with a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in which sustained endeavour was forged, and the one delicate thing to be done for the old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, “your way is, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy and purpose. Look at me.”
“Oh, botheration!” returned Sydney, with a lighter and more good- humoured laugh, “don’t YOU be moral!”
“How have I done what I have done?” said Stryver; “how do I do what I do?”
“Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it’s not worth your while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you want to do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always behind.”
“I had to get into the front rank; I was not born there, was I?”
“I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is you were,” said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they both laughed.
“Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury,” pursued Carton, “you have fallen into your rank, and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow-students in the Student-Quarter of Paris, picking up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that we didn’t get much good of, you were always somewhere, and I was always nowhere.”
“And whose fault was that?”
“Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were always driving and riving and shouldering and passing, to that restless degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust and repose. It’s a gloomy thing, however, to talk about one’s own past, with the day breaking. Turn me in some other direction before I go.”
“Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness,” said Stryver, holding up his glass. “Are you turned in a pleasant direction?”
Apparently not, for he became gloomy again.
“Pretty witness,” he muttered, looking down into his glass. “I have had enough of witnesses to-day and to-night; who’s your pretty witness?”
“The picturesque doctor’s daughter, Miss Manette.”
“SHE pretty?”
“Is she not?”
“No.”
“Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole Court!”
“Rot the admiration of the whole Court! Who made the Old Bailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden-haired doll!”
“Do you know, Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, looking at him with sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face: “do you know, I rather thought, at the time, that you sympathised with the golden-haired doll, and were quick to see what happened to the golden-haired doll?”
“Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no doll, swoons within a yard or two of a man’s nose, he can see it without a perspective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I’ll have no more drink; I’ll get to bed.”
When his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle, to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through its grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the first spray of it in its advance had begun to overwhelm the city.
Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.
Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.
背景介绍和作者简介
这段文字选自查尔斯·狄更斯于1859年创作的著名小说《双城记》。狄更斯是一位享有盛誉的英国作家，以其生动的人物刻画和社会批判而闻名。故事背景设定在法国大革命的动荡时期，探讨了牺牲、复活以及正义与非正义之间的斗争等主题。狄更斯创作这部小说是为了揭示当时的社会不平等和人类苦难，同时也通过个人转变和救赎来传递希望。
对文章的详细解读
这篇节选主要讲述了两位人物——斯特里弗先生和悉尼·卡顿，他们是伦敦的律师。它揭示了他们截然不同的个性和人生选择。斯特里弗雄心勃勃，性格外向，渴望向上爬，而卡顿则懒散、衣衫不整，被认为前途无望。尽管卡顿有缺点，但他是一位忠诚的朋友，也是斯特里弗成功的幕后军师。文章还展现了他们酗酒的习惯，这在当时是一种常见的社会行为，并暗示了卡顿内心的悲伤和被浪费的潜力。
这一幕捕捉了这两个人之间复杂的关系：斯特里弗是自信的“狮子”，而卡顿是自贬的“豺狼”。它也突出了卡顿深刻的自我意识，以及他与自身失败和遗憾的斗争。“光荣野心的海市蜃楼”和“周围一片荒漠”的意象象征着卡顿失去的希望和他感受到的情感空虚。
给学生的启示和见解
-
理解人类的复杂性
这些人物提醒我们，人往往是优点和缺点的混合体。悉尼·卡顿虽然被视为失败者，但他也有闪光点和忠诚的一面。这教导学生不要只看第一印象，要欣赏他人的内在深度。 -
雄心和努力的重要性
斯特里弗的成功源于他无情的野心和努力工作，而卡顿的生活却充满了被浪费的才能。学生们可以了解到，雄心壮志，加上持续的努力，是实现目标的关键。 -
选择的后果
卡顿的自毁习惯和缺乏目标导致了他的不幸。这段文字鼓励年轻读者反思自己的选择，以及这些选择如何塑造他们的未来。 -
友谊和支持
尽管存在差异，卡顿仍然忠实地支持斯特里弗。这表明了友谊和忠诚的价值，即使朋友们的人生道路不同。
如何在生活中应用这些教训
-
在学习中：
学生们应该认识到自己的潜力，并努力充分发挥自己的能力，避免像卡顿那样拖延或自我怀疑。设定明确的目标并稳步前进是关键。 -
在社交场合中：
理解人们的复杂性有助于建立同情心和更好的人际关系。就像斯特里弗和卡顿一样，即使性格不同，只要有尊重和支持，友谊也能蓬勃发展。 -
在个人成长中：
反思自己的习惯和态度，特别是那些可能阻碍自己进步的习惯和态度，是很重要的。培养自律和积极的心态可以防止卡顿所经历的那种绝望。
从故事中培养积极的品质
-
韧性：
即使卡顿挣扎，他清晰的时刻和忠诚也展现了韧性。学生们可以学会从挫折中恢复过来并继续努力。 -
自我反思：
卡顿对自身缺点的认识是痛苦的，但也是诚实的。鼓励自我反思有助于年轻人更好地了解自己并做出改进。 -
有原则的雄心：
斯特里弗的雄心壮志很强，但有时却不择手段。学生们应该追求成功，但始终保持诚实和善良。
结论
《双城记》中的这段文字提供了对人性、雄心和友谊的深刻见解。通过研究这些人物及其斗争，学生们可以获得关于做出明智选择、支持朋友和努力实现自身潜力的宝贵教训。狄更斯的故事鼓励读者深入审视自己和他人，培养同情心和个人成长，这些都可以在学校、社交生活及其他方面应用。
