这是一座木结构的大房子,建筑的样式,在我们较古老的城镇的街道上仍可找到此类样本,不过如今青苔丛生,倾颓欲倒。在那些阴暗的房间里发生过或消逝了的许多悲欢离合的故事,有的依然记忆犹新,有的已游丝难觅,但都让人触景生情,黯然神伤。但在当时,这座大宅还保持着清新如初的外表,从洒满阳光的窗户里传出居家的欢言笑语,死亡还没有降临此屋。
This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which there are specimens still extant in the streets of our older towns now moss—grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or forgotten, that have happened and passed away within their dusky chambers.Then, however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation, into which death had never entered. It had, indeed, a very cheery aspect, the walls being overspread with a kind of stucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifully intermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslant–wise over the front of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it by the double handful.