《瓦尔登湖·第六章·访客·Visitors》第3节
If one guest came he sometimes partook of my frugal meal, and it was no interruption to conversation to be stirring a hasty-pudding, or watching the rising and maturing of a loaf of bread in the ashes, in the mean while. But if twenty came and sat in my house there was nothing said about dinner, though there might be bread enough for two, more than if eating were a forsaken habit; but we naturally practised abstinence; and this was never felt to be an offence against hospitality, but the most proper and considerate course. The waste and decay of physical life, which so often needs repair, seemed miraculously retarded in such a case, and the vital vigor stood its ground. I could entertain thus a thousand as well as twenty; and if any ever went away disappointed or hungry from my house when they found me at home, they may depend upon it that I sympathized with them at least. So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old. You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give. For my own part, I was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a man’s house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, as by the parade one made about dining me, which I took to be a very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so again. I think I shall never revisit those scenes. I should be proud to have for the motto of my cabin those lines of Spenser which one of my visitors inscribed on a yellow walnut leaf for a card:— “Arrivéd there, the little house they fill, / Ne looke for entertainment where none was; / Rest is their feast, and all things at their will: / The noblest mind the best contentment has.”
注释摘要
梭罗在这一段里讨论的，实质是如何重新定义待客之道。他把来客分为两种情形：一人独访，与二十人同至。一人来时，客人有时会分享他那顿简单得不能再简单的饭，梭罗一边搅“hasty-pudding”——这是新英格兰常见的玉米粉糊，用沸水迅速冲搅而成，类似速成粥——一边看着灰烬里的面包慢慢膨胀熟透，谈话完全不受打扰。做饭不是打断谈话的杂务，反而是谈话的一部分，是生活本…