高考英语阅读素材 A TALE OF TWO CITIES-2-14.pdfVIP

A TALE OF TWO CITIES_2_14 CHAPTER XIV The Honest Tradesman TO the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, sitting on his stool in Fleet Street with his grisly urchin beside him, a vast number and variety of objects in movement were every day presented. Who could sit upon anything in Fleet Street during the busy hours of the day, and not be dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever tending westward with the sun, the other ever tending eastward from the sun, both ever tending to the plains beyond the range of red and purple where the sun goes down! With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher sat watching the two streams, like the heathen rustic who has for several centuries been on duty watching one stream--saving that Jerry had no expectation of their ever running dry. Nor would it have been an expectation of a hopeful kind, since Ball part of his income was derived from the pilotage of timid women (mostly of a full habit and past the middle of life) from Tellsons side of the tides to the opposite ore. Brief as such companionship was in every separate instance, Mr. Cruncher never failed to become so interested the lady as to express a strong desire to have the honour drinking her very good health. And it was from the gifts towed upon him towards the execution of this benevolent purpose, that he recruited his finances, as just now observed. Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place, and mused in the sight of men. Mr. Cruncher, sitting on stool in a public place, but not being a poet, mused as little as possible, and looked about him. It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when crowds were few, and belated women few, and when his affairs in general were so unprosperous as to awaken a strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs. Cruncher must have been `flopping in some pointed manner, when an unusual concourse pouring down Fleet Street westward, attracted hi