英语听书《白鲸记》第9期

It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where thattempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worsehowling than ever it did about poor Paul's tossedcraft.

Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasantzephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the hobquietly toasting for bed. "In judging of thattempestuous wind called Euroclydon,"

says an old writer of whose works I possess the onlycopy extant"it maketh a marvellous difference,whether thou lookest out at it from a glass windowwhere the frost is all on the outside,

or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and ofwhich the wight Death is the only glazier."

True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my mindold black-letter, thou reasonestwell.

Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn't stopup the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there.

But it's too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is on,and the chips were carted off a million years ago.

Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow,

and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put acorn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon.

Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh,pooh! What a fine frosty night;

how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes ofeverlasting conservatories;

give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.

But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to the grandnorthern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here?

Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods!go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost?

Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of Dives, this ismore wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas.

Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being apresident of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.

But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is plenty of that yet tocome.

Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what sort of a place this "Spouter" may be.