Chapter 1

THE PRISON-DOOR

第一章 监狱的门

A throng of bearded men, in sadcoloured garments, and grey, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

一群蓄着胡须、身穿暗色外衣、头戴灰色尖顶高帽的男人，夹带了一些女人--她们有的蒙着兜帽，有的光着脑袋，都聚在一所木制的建筑物外，大门是用厚实的橡木制成，上面钉满了大铁钉。

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule, it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King's Chapel. Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grassplot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, appleperu, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison. But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.

新殖民地的建立者，不论他们起初对人类道德和幸福抱有怎样不切实际的理想，在其早期的实际需求中，总会意识到要划出一片处女地作为墓地，还有一部分要用来修建监狱。根据这个惯例，我们可以有把握地推断出，在波士顿定居的祖先们已经在康希尔一带修建了第一座监狱，同时期他们还在艾萨克·约翰逊地带标出了第一块墓地。以坟墓为中心，皇室教堂的古冢便逐渐形成了。可以肯定的是，在城镇建立十五年或二十年之后，那座木制的监狱已经刻上了日晒雨淋和岁月流逝的痕迹，为它那狰狞阴森的大门增添几分晦暗凄凉的景象。笨重的橡木门上铁锈斑斑，显得比新大陆上的任何事物都古老。就像一切与罪恶有关的事物一样，这座监狱似乎从未经历过所谓的青春年华。在这座丑陋的建筑物前，一直到布满车辙的街道之间，是一片草地，长满了牛蒡、茨藜、假酸浆等此类难看的草木。它们显然与这片土地意气相投，因为这里很早便滋生了文明社会的罪恶之花--监狱。然而，在大门的一侧，几乎是在门坎处，长了一簇野玫瑰。在这个六月，玫瑰枝上开满了如宝石般精致的花朵。人们想象，它们会给踏进监狱的犯人，以及那些即将直面命运的刑徒，带来芬芳和妩媚。它们以此表示，大自然在内心深处仍对那些罪人怀有一丝同情与怜爱。

This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally over-shadowed it-or whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson, as she entered the prison-door-we shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolise some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.

由于某种不可思议的机缘，这簇玫瑰得以历劫而永生; 仅是因为当年遮掩它的巨松和橡树倒下了，这簇玫瑰才得以在古老的荒野中存活下来吗？还是如人们所深信不疑的权威说法那样，当年圣徒安·哈钦森踏进狱门时，玫瑰便从她脚下破土而出了呢？这都无需我们亲自去确定。既然故事要从这道不祥的大门开始，而这簇野玫瑰刚好就长在门坎处，我们不如摘下其中一朵玫瑰，将其献给读者。但愿这簇玫瑰，能在这个关于人性脆弱和哀伤的故事中，作为道德之花的象征，让人访得一丝甜美，或是在读完阴晦凄惨的故事结局时，使人得到些许慰藉。