目录

Salem，my home town
塞勒姆，我的家乡
1．Hester Prynne’S shame
赫斯特·普林的耻辱
2．Roger Chillingworth’S secret
罗杰·奇林沃思的秘密
……

书摘
A
Aalem, my home town, is a quiet place, and not many ships call
at the port here, though in the last century,before the war with
Britain, the port was often busy. Now the ships go down the coast
to the great seaports of Boston or New York, and grass grows in
the streets around the old port buildings in Salem.
For a few years, when I was a young man, I worked in the port
offices of Salem. Most of the time, there was very little work to
do, and one day in 1849 I was looking through an old wooden box in
one of the dusty, unused rooms of the building. It was full of
papers about long-forgotten ships, but then something red caught
my eye. I took it out and saw that it was a piece of red material,
in the shape of a letter about ten centimetres long. It was the
capital letter A. It was a wonderful piece of needlework, with
patterns of gold thread around the letter, but the material was
now worn thin with age.
塞勒姆，我的家乡，是一个平静的地方，没有太多的船只在这里的港口
停靠，但在上个世纪我们和英国开战之前，这个港口还挺繁忙的。如今，船
只都沿着海岸南下，驶向波士顿或纽约的大港口了。塞勒姆旧港口建筑物周
围的街道上蔓生着野草。
我年轻时，曾在塞勒姆的港口办事处工作过几年。大多数时候，我都很
清闲，但是在1849年的一天，我在一间布满灰尘、已经废弃不用的房间里查
看一个旧木匣子。匣子中塞满了早已被人遗忘的船只的有关文件，有一件红
色的东西引起了我的注意。我把它拿出来才发现原来是一片红色的布料，看
起来像是一个字母，约有10厘米长，那是个大写的“A”。这是一件精细的
针线活儿，金线滚边，不过由于年代久远，布料已被磨得很薄了。
It was a strange thing to find. What could it mean? Was it
once part of some fashionable lady's dress long years ago?Perhaps
a mark to show that the wearer was a famous person, or someone of
good family or great importance?
I held it in my hands, wondering, and it seemed to me that
the scarlet le
……