但是有一个时间段使索伯先生想起来就发抖。那就是晚上他必须回家好让朋友们睡觉，而另一个时间是早上，因为这时全世界的人都拒绝被打搅。不过他有许多办法去缓解这段无聊时刻的痛苦。他安慰自己，手工艺受到了不应有的忽视，他发现周密的思考在很多方面都有影响力——即推理的效应。过仔细地观察思索之后，他开始实践。首先为自己购置了木工家具，并且成功地修好自家的煤箱。相信只要有机会，他就会继续这个实践。
除了干木匠活，他还试图学习鞋匠、锡匠、管道工和陶工的技艺。虽然这些他都没学成，但他决心去更好地学习来操纵这些。但是他的日常娱乐是化学。他有个用来蒸馏的小炉子，这是他长期以来生活的慰藉。他提取油、水，各种物质精华，尽管他也知道这些毫无用处，当他坐在曲颈瓶前数着一滴一滴的液体，看着它们滴答而落时，时光就飞逝而过。
哎，可怜的索伯！我常用责备的口气去取笑他，而他也常答应悔过自新。没有人像懒人那样：轻易地认错，但很少做出半点实际的改动。本文会有何效果我不明了，可能他会一笑了之，继续生炉子，但是我真的希望他别再做琐事，能够理智勤奋地做一些有用之事。
古瓷器
Old China
查尔斯·兰姆 / Charles Lamb
查尔斯·兰姆（1775—1834），英国最杰出的小品文作家、散文家。兰姆十分赞赏浪漫主义思潮中人性主义的主张，并以此创作了充满温情和调侃的个性化散文。同时，兰姆也热爱城市生活，善于用敏锐独特的眼光捕捉市井生活中变幻的都市风情。其后期创作的《伊里亚随笔》，情趣丰富，表述精妙，堪称兰姆散文创作的最高成就。《古瓷器》是其中的名篇之一。本文节选自《古瓷器》的前半部分。
I have an almost feminine partiality for old china. When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the china closet, and next for the picture gallery. I cannot defend the order of preference, but by saying that we have all some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one. I can call to mind the first play, and the first exhibition, that I was taken to; but I am not conscious of a time when china jars and saucers were introduced into my imagination.
I had no repugnance then—why should I now have?—to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that under the notion of men and women float about, uncircumscribed by any element, in that world before perspective—a china teacup.
I like to see my old friends—whom distance cannot diminish—figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics ), yet on terra firma still—for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring up beneath their sandals.
I love the men with women' s faces, and the women, if possible, with still more womanish expressions.
Here is a young and courtly mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a salver—two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect! And here the same lady, or another—for likeness is identity on teacups—is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence(as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead—furlong off on the other side of the same strange stream!
Farther on—if far or near can be predicated of their world—see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays.
Here—a cow and rabbit couchant, and coextensive—so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay.
I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink unmixed still of an afternoon), some of these speciosa miracula upon a set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent purchase) which we were now for the first time using; and could not help remarking how favorable circumstances had been to us of late years that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort—when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows of my companion. I am quick at detecting these summer clouds in Bridget.
"I wish the good old times would come again," she said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state"—so she was pleased to ramble on— "in which I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O! How much ado I had to get you to consent in those times!)—we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against, and think what we might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money that we paid for it.
