《瓦尔登湖·第四章·声音·Sounds》第9节
What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter. I see these men every day go about their business with more or less courage and content, doing more even than they suspect, and perchance better employed than they could have consciously devised. I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plough for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o’-clock in the morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen. On this morning of the Great Snow, perchance, which is still raging and chilling men’s blood, I hear the muffled tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of their chilled breath, which announces that the cars are coming, without long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New England north-east snow storm, and I behold the ploughmen covered with snow and rime, their heads peering, above the mould-board which is turning down other than daisies and the nests of field-mice, like bowlders of the Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place in the universe.
注释摘要
梭罗在《声音》这一章里处理了一个看似矛盾的主题：他对商业的赞美。这段话的起点是一个惊人的比较——比起军人在战场上的英勇，他更钦佩铁路除雪工人在暴风雪中坚守岗位的沉着与快活。布埃纳维斯塔是美墨战争中的一场战役，梭罗故意拿它来作参照，不是为了贬低士兵，而是为了重新定义什么是值得敬重的勇敢。他要找的是一种日常的、持续的、不需要敌人和观众来激发的勇气。 “凌晨三点…