英汉互译文章原文

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1．

The Quest

Taking the train, the two friends arrived in Berlin in late October 1922, and went directly to the address of Chou Enlai. Would this man receive them as fellow countrymen, or would he treat them with cold suspicion and question them cautiously about their past careers as militarists? Chu Teh remembered his age. He was thirty-six, his youth had passed like a screaming eagle, leaving him old and disillusioned.

When Chou En-lai’s door opened they saw a slender man of more than average height with gleaming eyes and a face so striking that it bordered on the beautiful. Yet it was a manly face, serious and intelligent; and Chu judged him to be in his middle twenties.

Chou was a quiet and thoughtful man, even a little shy as he welcomed his visitors, urged them to be seated and to ten how he could help them.

Ignoring the chair offered him, Chu Teh stood squarely before this youth more than ten years his junior and in a level voice told him who he was, what he had done in the past, how he had fled from Yunnan, talked with Sun Yat-sen, been repulsed by Chen Tuhsiu in Shanghai, and had come to Europe to find a new way of life for himself and a new

revolutionary road for China. He wanted to join the Chinese Communist Party group in Berlin, he would study and work hard? he would do anything he was asked to do but5 return to his old life, which had turned to ashes beneath his feet.

As he talked Chou En-lai stood facing him, his head a little to one side as was his habit, listening intently until the story was told. and then questioning him.

When both visitors had told their stories, Chou smiled a little, said he would help them find rooms, and arrange for them to join the Berlin Communist group as candidates until their application had been sent to China and an answer received. When the reply came a few months later they were enrolled as full members, but Chu's membership was kept a secret from outsiders.

2.

How to Grow Old

by Bertrand Russcll

In spite of the title, this article will really be on1 how not to grow old, which, at my time of life, is a much more important subject. My first advice would be to choose your ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young 1 J have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the flower of his youth at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who

did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off. A great grandmother of mine; who was a friend of Gibbon, lived to the age of ninety-two, and to her last day remained a terror to all her descendants. My maternal grandmother, after having nine children who survived, one who died in infancy and many miscarriages, as soon as she became a widow devoted herself to women’s higher education. She was one of the founders of Girton College, and worked hard at opening the medical profession to women. She used to relate how she met in Italy an elderly gentleman who was looking very sad. She inquired the cause of his melancholy and he said that he had just parted from his two grandchildren. “Good graci ous,”she exclaimed, “I have seventy-two grandchildren, and if I were sad each time I parted from one of them, I should have a dismal existence!”“Madre snaturate,”he replied. But speaking as one of the seventy-two, I prefer her recipe. After the age of eighty she found she had some difficulty in getting to sleep, so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a. m. in reading popular science. I do not believe that she ever had time to notice that she was growing old. This, I think, is the proper recipe for remaining young. If you have wide and keen interests and activities in which you can still be effective, you will have no reason to think about the merely statistical fact of the number of years you have already lived, still less of the probable brevity of your future.