激情晨读英语美文 第二章 从一粒沙看世界:三个纽约
激情晨读英语美文 第二章 从一粒沙看世界:三个纽约
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The Three New Yorks
By Elwin Brooks White
There are roughly three New Yorks.
There is, first, the New York of the man or
woman who was born here, who takes the city
for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence
as natural and inevitable. Second, there is
the New York of the commuter — the city that
is devoured by locusts each day and spat out
each night. Third, there is the New York of
the person who was born somewhere else and
came to New York in quest of something.
Of these three trembling cities the greatest
is the last — the city of final destination,
the city that is a goal.It is this third city
that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition,
its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts,
and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give
the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it
solidarity and continuity, but the settlers
give it passion. And whether it is a farmer
arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store
in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town
in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed
by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt
with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart,
it makes no difference: each embraces New York
with the intense excitement of first love,
each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of
an adventurer, each generates heat and light to
dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.
