在我们这座大城市里

在我们这座大城市里，姻缘与奇遇像两个形影不离的伙伴，日夜不停地在街上寻找着真正的有心人。 当我们在马路上走时，它们暗暗瞅着我们，变换各种方式挑逗。 例如，偶一抬头时，我们可能看到某个窗户里伸出个头，那脸与我们心目中理想人物的很相像； 在一条熟睡了的大街上，我们冷不防听到一所紧闭着门窗没人住的房子里发出痛苦而恐惧的尖叫； 马车夫没把我们送到熟悉的人家，却把车停止一个不认识的人家门口，门一开有人笑脸相迎请我们进屋； 一所不知谁住的的高楼上会飘下一张纸，就落在你跟前，纸上写着字； 在来来往往的人群中，我们与某个陌生人的眼光不期而遇，双方都流露出憎恨、喜爱或畏惧； 天突然落下一阵雨，与我们共伞的竟是位素昧平生的姑娘或郎君； 随时随地我们都可能遇到人掉手帕，打手势，丢眼风，这都是奇遇的引线，有无意丢失的，有单独放出的，有高兴时抛下的，神秘莫测，变化多端，带着危险，让我们拾到了。 然而我们没几个人愿意抓住这些引线，沿着引线追踪。 陈规像根棍棒，把我们制服得不能动弹。 我们会随手扔掉这些引线。 等到有一天一辈子的枯燥生活要完结了，我们才会醒悟，发觉我们的情场经历无声无色， 不过是结一两次婚，或者是用保险柜收藏一个丝绸蝴蝶结， 或者是跟一个脾气大的人闹一生的别扭。 ——欧·亨利《绿色门》

In the big city the twin spirits Romance and Adventure are always abroad seeking worthy wooers. As we roam the streets they slyly peep at us and challenge us in twenty different guises. Without knowing why, we look up suddenly to see in a window a face that seems to belong to our gallery of intimate portraits; in a sleeping thoroughfare we hear a cry of agony and fear coming from an empty and shuttered house; instead of at our familiar curb, a cab–driver deposits us before a strange door, which one, with a smile, opens for us and bids us enter; a slip of paper, written upon, flutters down to our feet from the high lattices of Chance; we exchange glances of instantaneous hate, affection and fear with hurrying strangers in the passing crowds; a sudden douse of rain—and our umbrella may be sheltering the daughter of the Full Moon and first cousin of the Sidereal System; at every corner handkerchiefs drop, fingers beckon, eyes besiege, and the lost, the lonely, the rapturous, the mysterious, the perilous, changing clues of adventure are slipped into our fingers. But few of us are willing to hold and follow them. We are grown stiff with the ramrod of convention down our backs. We pass on; and some day we come, at the end of a very dull life, to reflect that our romance has been a pallid thing of a marriage or two, a satin rosette kept in a safe–deposit drawer, and a lifelong feud with a steam radiator.