英语美文欣赏：《丛林中的孩子》欧亨利
Babes In The Jungle从林中的孩子从林中的孩子：英国古代民谣和儿歌中有“森林中的孩子“的故事，叙说一个恶叔叔为篡夺财产，将一对侄儿女骗至森林害死。后来为一词用来指天真轻信，容易受骗的人。
Montague Silver, the finest street man and art grafter in the West, says to
me once in Little Rock: "If you ever lose your mind, Billy, and get too old to
do honest swindling among grown men, go to New York. In the West a sucker is
born every minute; but in New York they appear in chunks of roe - you can't
count 'em!"
Two years afterward I found that I couldn't remember the names of the
Russian admirals, and I noticed some gray hairs over my left ear; so I knew the
time had arrived for me to take Silver's advice.
I struck New York about noon one day, and took a walk up Broadway. And I
run against Silver himself, all encompassed up in a spacious kind of
haberdashery, leaning against a hotel and rubbing the half-moons on his nails
with a silk handkerchief.
"Paresis or superannuated?" I asks him.
"Hello, Billy," says Silver; "I'm glad to see you. Yes, it seemed to me
that the West was accumulating a little too much wiseness. I've been saving New
York for dessert. I know it's a low-down trick to take things from these people.
They only know this and that and pass to and fro and think ever and anon. I'd
hate for my mother to know I was skinning these weak-minded ones. She raised me
better."
"Is there a crush already in the waiting rooms of the old doctor that does
skin grafting?" I asks.
"Well, no," says Silver; "you needn't back Epidermis to win today. I've
only been here a month. But I'm ready to begin; and the members of Willie
Manhattan's Sunday School class, each of whom has volunteered to contribute a
portion of cuticle toward this rehabilitation, may as well send their photos to
the Evening Daily.
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