马克吐温最佳短篇小说 13 The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm
时间：2018-12-06 作者：英语课 分类：马克吐温最佳短篇小说
英语课
The conversation drifted smoothly 1 and pleasantly along from weather to crops, from crops to literature, from literature to scandal, from scandal to religion; then took a random 2 jump, and landed on the subject of burglar alarms. And now for the first time Mr.McWilliams showed feeling. Whenever I perceive this sign on this man's dial, I comprehend it, and lapse 3 into silence, and give him opportunity to unload his heart.
Said he, with but ill – controlled emotion:"I do not go one single cent on burglar alarms, Mr. Twain--not a single cent--and I will tell you why. When we were finishing our house, we found we had a little cash left over,on account of the plumber 4 not knowing it. I was for enlightening the heathen with it, for I was always unaccountably down on the heathen somehow; but Mrs. McWilliams said no, let's have a burglar alarm. I agreed to this compromise.
I will explain that whenever I want a thing, and Mrs. McWilliams wants another thing, and we decide upon the thing that Mrs. McWilliams wants--as we always do --she calls that a compromise. Very well: the man came up from New York and put in the alarm, and charged three hundred and twenty – five dollars for it, and said we could sleep without neasiness now. So we did for awhile--say a month. Then one night we smelled smoke, and I was advised to get up and see what the matter was.
I lit a candle, and started toward the stairs, and met a burglar coming out of a room with a basket of tinware, which he had mistaken for solid silver in the dark. He was moking a pipe. I said, 'My friend, we do not allow smoking in this room.' He said he was a stranger, and could not be expected to know the rules of the house: said he had been in many houses just as good as this one, and it had never been objected to before. He added that as far as his experience went, such rules had never been considered to apply to burglars, anyway.
1 smoothly
adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地
- The workmen are very cooperative,so the work goes on smoothly.工人们十分合作，所以工作进展顺利。
- Just change one or two words and the sentence will read smoothly.这句话只要动一两个字就顺了。
2 random
adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动
- The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
- On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。