寫在前面的話

筆者是一個準(zhǔn)高一學(xué)生，首次創(chuàng)作，多多見諒，歡迎大家在評論區(qū)交流鴨~

關(guān)于為什么用英文寫小說，因為筆者的中文文筆實在太差，當(dāng)時突發(fā)奇想用英語寫了第一章，所以就一直寫下去了@_@

故事的大致背景是1860年英國，部分細(xì)節(jié)可能與當(dāng)時的歷史有出入，歡迎大家指正，也請多多包涵~

Chapter 1

?Samuel Macmillan was perhaps the most ordinary of the ordinary that you may find in 19th century England. Born into a poor family in the downwash of London, for eighteen years he could saw only the slim slit of grey sky between the thatched wooden roofs and the huge black pillars smoking heavily into the sky.

?The Industrial Revolution, they say, brought forth wealth—but for Sam his life was filled with poverty and ignorance. Not only him, the members of their shabby neighborhood more often than not spend their lives upon the factory looms that grinded their health and gave wealth to so few. They simply moved, numbly, from one dark era to another bleak years.

?The neighborhood was spread on the sides of a muddy road that had more bumps and pits than a road. On one end of its lies a factory, the powerhouse of the district that so many went to work under its dark, depressive roofs. On the other end, the river Thames followed by, filled with the unspeakable littering of those stream. Every once in a while, steamboats would carry men clad in elegant suits and ladies adorned with glamorous dresses, the two types of people the most unfitting to the surroundings, across the Thames as the people on the banks numbly listen to the sharp and purposeful laughter that was quickly strangled by the misery of so many.

?Other than steamboats, the most common visitors to the neighborhood were disease and policemen. Different kinds of disease just went its course throughout the population, leaving people bed-bound, useless, jobless and more often than not perished within days. Almost every bed the citizens of the community slept on was one of their relative’s deathbed. Police were even worse than the disease--using sticks, guns and sabers, they, the law-keepers, crushed out the very last of the people’s wealth they worked so hard and so long to accumulate. The people simply stood in numb and silence as the police did its ‘job’. They would then gamble all night, putting the properties of hundreds simply as change. It wasn’t until a group of policemen tried to lay hands on the daughter of Bill Smith did someone took charge on the policeman -- and after several gunshots people wrapped the remains of Bill and his daughter the following day.

?Samuel Macmillan, was raised in this hell on earth.

?

?22 years ago, Sam was born to Tom and Sarah Macmillan on a cold autumn night. As the fourth child of his family, he could hardly remember a time when his plate was filled with anything else than porridge. But in his childhood days, he never disliked it -- for him it was only common to have porridge every day. And, to be honest, he thought his mother’s porridge tasted quite well.

?? He recalled his childhood years from time to time as the happiest years of his life. He would play on the muddy road, run after other children and hope for a day called Christmas with mom and dad would perhaps buy him a cheap toy and when there will be a piece of old bacon on the table.? Education was barely heard of in the neighbourhood, however, Sam’s parents were not illiterate. They somehow managed to teach their children a little ABCs, but nothing more than learning the basic words of English.

?His childhood came to a sudden end after his 10th birthday, his parents told him to work as child labour in the factory to earn a living for the family, like how his elder brothers and sisters did as a child, he crawled under the huge horrifying metal monsters full of sharp razors and dangerous edges. Work began at six, and ends at 10 in the evening -- for six and a half days, every week. All those hard labour, for two shillings a week, the amount of money the child of the rich would spend in half a second to buy some treats. On the afternoon off, they would head to the local church, where they’d mechanically repeat the same words numbly in front of an altar dusted with perhaps decades of dust. During so many masses when the old priest said his prayers with a dull voice, he wondered if God was too old to see it clearly and was not aware of their miserable lives so many endured.

?The boring and painful life continued, utmost harsh but somehow acceptable. During the years news of labour unions were heard; but the people there little cared as they knew that the simple act of closing down the factory for a month would spell disaster for the entire community. But they did not know that disaster would always come, and this time it came in the form of a disease the knowledgeable called pneumonia.

?In Sam’s memory, it was a particularly harsh winter. Heavy snow blocked the roads and froze the surface of the Thames into pieces of ice, while the cruel cold brought a plus side to working because people could gather for warmth beside the roaring boilers despite the wuthering winds poured in through the broken windows.

?However, under these roofs, the disease also spread quietly across the population. Men and women fell one after another, and before long most of the people were coughing on their beds. The Macmillans didn’t escape for long—soon they were huddling for warmth in their blankets, bearing the pain of disease, cold and hunger. Several times in the morning one of them would never wake up, and by the end of the winter there were only two whose body was still warm.

?? The Christmas carols were carried to the neighbourhood by the winds, one of the few things that could overcome the barrier of snow and cold. But once inside the community its merry rhythm was blended with the coughing, painful moans of the people and turned into a requiem.

?When spring finally came and the ice on the Thames melted. People finally went out of their houses, many of them carrying bodies of their family on the shoulders. There was no funeral, as the old priest himself was lying in a shroud, only some simple prayers and the bodies were floated down the river. Sam and his brother could not possibly hold back there tears as the bodies of their parents and two sisters, along with their young brother, disappeared at the bending of the river.

?Life still continued, as two years passed in the labouring in the factories. However, misery and fate took its toll on Sam again. On a Sunday afternoon, a group of policemen kicked the doors of the Macmillans open and demanded a fine for “tarnishing the Thames”, which was but an excuse for an official, legal robbery. The two, still young, lashed out at the officers—before long Sam was pinned to the wall at gunpoint while he watched in horror as a policeman’s rifle went off. His brother, who was just wrestling with the police a moment ago, now collapsed to the ground, his chest drenched with blood.

?The police hurried out as Sam knelt towards his brother, his only relative left on Earth, now lying in his own blood. He held his hand, who returned with such little force that when it finally died down Sam did not even notice until the warmth of the hand slowly disappeared.?