"I should say the first thing of all would be to get a grammar. Your grammar is - " She had intended saying "awful," but she amended it to "is not particularly good."
He flushed and sweated.
"I know I must talk a lot of slang an' words you don't understand. But then they're the only words I know - how to speak. I've got other words in my mind, picked 'em up from books, but I can't pronounce 'em, so I don't use 'em."
"It isn't what you say, so much as how you say it. You don't mind my being frank, do you? I don't want to hurt you."
"No, no," he cried, while he secretly blessed her for her kindness. "Fire away. I've got to know, an' I'd sooner know from you than anybody else."
"Well, then, you say, 'You was'; it should be, 'You were.' You say 'I seen' for 'I saw.' You use the double negative - "
"What's the double negative?" he demanded; then added humbly, "You see, I don't even understand your explanations."
"I'm afraid I didn't explain that," she smiled. "A double negative is - let me see - well, you say, 'never helped nobody.' 'Never' is a negative. 'Nobody' is another negative. It is a rule that two negatives make a positive. 'Never helped nobody' means that, not helping nobody, they must have helped somebody."
"That's pretty clear," he said. "I never thought of it before. But it don't mean they MUST have helped somebody, does it? Seems to me that 'never helped nobody' just naturally fails to say whether or not they helped somebody. I never thought of it before, and I'll never say it again."
She was pleased and surprised with the quickness and surety of his mind. As soon as he had got the clew he not only understood but corrected her error.
"You'll find it all in the grammar," she went on. "There's something else I noticed in your speech. You say 'don't' when you shouldn't. 'Don't' is a contraction and stands for two words. Do you know them?"
He thought a moment, then answered, "'Do not.'"
She nodded her head, and said, "And you use 'don't' when you mean 'does not.'"
He was puzzled over this, and did not get it so quickly.
"Give me an illustration," he asked.
"Well - " She puckered her brows and pursed up her mouth as she thought, while he looked on and decided that her expression was most adorable. "'It don't do to be hasty.' Change 'don't' to 'do not,' and it reads, 'It do not do to be hasty,' which is perfectly absurd."
He turned it over in his mind and considered.
"Doesn't it jar on your ear?" she suggested.
"Can't say that it does," he replied judicially.
"Why didn't you say, 'Can't say that it do'?" she queried.
"That sounds wrong," he said slowly. "As for the other I can't make up my mind. I guess my ear ain't had the trainin' yours has."
"There is no such word as 'ain't,'" she said, prettily emphatic.
Martin flushed again.
"And you say 'ben' for 'been,'" she continued; "'come' for 'came'; and the way you chop your endings is something dreadful."
"How do you mean?" He leaned forward, feeling that he ought to get down on his knees before so marvellous a mind. "How do I chop?"
"You don't complete the endings. 'A-n-d' spells 'and.' You pronounce it 'an'.' 'I-n-g' spells 'ing.' Sometimes you pronounce it 'ing' and sometimes you leave off the 'g.' And then you slur by dropping initial letters and diphthongs. 'T-h-e-m' spells 'them.' You pronounce it - oh, well, it is not necessary to go over all of them. What you need is the grammar. I'll get one and show you how to begin."
As she arose, there shot through his mind something that he had read in the etiquette books, and he stood up awkwardly, worrying as to whether he was doing the right thing, and fearing that she might take it as a sign that he was about to go.
"By the way, Mr. Eden," she called back, as she was leaving the room. "What is BOOZE? You used it several times, you know."
"Oh, booze," he laughed. "It's slang. It means whiskey an' beer - anything that will make you drunk."
"And another thing," she laughed back. "Don't use 'you' when you are impersonal. 'You' is very personal, and your use of it just now was not precisely what you meant."
"I don't just see that."
"Why, you said just now, to me, 'whiskey and beer - anything that will make you drunk' - make me drunk, don't you see?"
"Well, it would, wouldn't it?"
"Yes, of course," she smiled. "But it would be nicer not to bring me into it. Substitute 'one' for 'you' and see how much better it sounds."
When she returned with the grammar, she drew a chair near his - he wondered if he should have helped her with the chair - and sat down beside him. She turned the pages of the grammar, and their heads were inclined toward each other. He could hardly follow her outlining of the work he must do, so amazed was he by her delightful propinquity. But when she began to lay down the importance of conjugation, he forgot all about her. He had never heard of conjugation, and was fascinated by the glimpse he was catching into the tie-ribs of language. He leaned closer to the page, and her hair touched his cheek. He had fainted but once in his life, and he thought he was going to faint again. He could scarcely breathe, and his heart was pounding the blood up into his throat and suffocating him. Never had she seemed so accessible as now. For the moment the great gulf that separated them was bridged. But there was no diminution in the loftiness of his feeling for her. She had not descended to him. It was he who had been caught up into the clouds and carried to her. His reverence for her, in that moment, was of the same order as religious awe and fervor. It seemed to him that he had intruded upon the holy of holies, and slowly and carefully he moved his head aside from the contact which thrilled him like an electric shock and of which she had not been aware.
从那天晚上第一次遇见露丝·莫尔斯起他已刻苦攻读了一周，却仍不敢去看他。他曾多次鼓起勇气要去，却总团顾虑重重而取消了决心。他不知道该什么时候去看她。没有人告诉他，他又害怕冒险，铸成难以补救的大错。他已摆脱了原来的朋友和生活方式，却又还没有新的朋友。除了读书再也无事可做。他读书时间极长，若是普通眼睛即使十双也已受不了，可他的眼睛很好，又有极健壮的身体作后盾。而且他的心灵已长期休耕，就书本上的抽象思维而；二，已经休耕了一辈子，最宜于播种。他的心灵还没有厌倦书本，总用它尖利的牙齿紧紧咬住书本上的知识不肯放松。
一周过去，他似乎已过了好几个世纪。旧的生活旧的观点被远远抛到了身后。他啃了些需要作多年准备才能阅读的书。今天读过时无用的哲学，明天读超前时髦的哲学，脑子里的概念矛盾抵触，弄得他晕头转向。读经济学家也一样。在图书馆的一个书架上他发现了卡尔·马克思、李嘉图、亚当·斯密和米尔，这一家的深奥公式无法证明另一家的思想已经过时。他弄得糊里糊涂，却仍然想弄个明白。他在一天之内对经济学、工业和政治都发生了兴趣。他从市政大楼公园经过，发现一大群人，中心有五六个人在使劲大声地辩论；争得面红耳赤。他上前去听，从这些人民哲学家们嘴里又听见了一套陌生的新语言。辩论者有一个是流浪汉，有一个是劳工煽动家，还有一个是法学院的学生，其他的入则是爱说话的劳动者。他第一次听见了社会主义、无政府主义、单一税制，也听说了种种论战不休的社会哲学。他听见了数以百计的新术语，它们所使用的领域是他那可怜的一点阅读所不曾涉猎到的。他无法紧跟讨论，只能猜测和估计包裹在这些陌生词语中的意思。还有个黑眼珠的旅馆服务员，是个通神论者，有个面包师联合会会员是个不可知论者。一个老先生大谈其“存在便是正确”的奇怪哲学，谈得大家目瞪口呆。另一个老先生则滔滔不绝地讲着宇宙和父原子与母原子。
马丁·伊登几小时后离开那里时脑子已是一片混乱。他匆匆忙忙赶到图书馆查了十多个不常见的词语的定义，离开图书馆时又在腋下突了四本书：布拉伐茨基夫人的《秘密学说》、《进步与贫困》、《社会主义精义》和《宗教对科学之战》。倒霉的是他竟从《秘密学说》读起。那书每一行都有些威风凛凛的多音节词，他不认识。他坐在床上熬夜读着，查字典比看书的时候还多。查过的生词太多，第二次见面又想不起来了，还得再查。他想了个办法。用笔记本把定义抄下来，抄了一页又一页，可仍然读不懂，一直读到凌晨三点，读得头昏脑涨，却没抓住书上一个根本思想。他抬起头来，屋子仿佛像海上的船在起伏颠簸，于是他咒骂了几声，把《秘密学说》往屋里一丢，关掉煤气灯，安下心来睡觉。读另外三本书时他也未必更走运。并不是因为他脑子笨，不管用，他的脑子是能思考这类问题的，只是缺乏思想训练和思考工具罢了。他也估计到了这一点，曾经考虑过别的不读，先记住同典上每个词再说。
不过诗歌倒给了他安慰。他读了许多诗，比较朴实平易的诗人给了他最大的乐趣。他爱美，在他们的诗平找到了美。诗歌像音乐一样打动着他。实际上读诗正为他即将承担的更沉重的工作作者准备，虽然他此刻并没有意识到。他的头脑是一页页的白纸，他读到而且喜欢的许多诗便大段大段地轻轻松松地印了上去。他立即在朗诵或是默读时体会到那些印刷出的诗章的音乐与美，从中获得巨大的快乐。然后他在图书馆一个书架上并排发现了盖利的《希腊罗马神话》和布尔芬奇的格言时代人那是一种启发，是射入地蒙昧的黑暗中的巨大光明。地读起诗来更津津有味了。
借书处的人因常在那儿见到马丁，便对他十分热情，他一进门总对他点头、微笑打招呼，因此马丁便做了一件大胆的事。他借了几本书，趁那人在卡片上盖章时急忙说道：
“啊——我有件事想请教你。”
那人微笑了一下，听他说。
‘你要是认识了一位小姐，而她又叫你去看她，你该多久以后再去？”
又是紧张，又是流汗，马丁觉得衬衫紧贴到了他肩上，粘住了。
“我看，什么时候都可以去，”那人回答。
“不错，可这事不同，”马丁反驳，“她……我……你看，是这么回事：没准儿她不在家。她在上大学呢。”
