It may not be too much to affirm, on the whole (the people being then in the first stages of joyless deportment, and the offspring of sires who had known how to be merry, in their day), that they would compare favourably, in point of holiday keeping, with their descendants, even at so long an interval as ourselves. Their immediate posterity, the generation next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of Puritanism, and so darkened the national visage with it, that all the subsequent years have not sufficed to clear it up. We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gaiety.
当时的居民还是第一代没有欢乐活动的人，而且又是那些活着时深诸如何行乐曲父辈们的直接后裔，就过节这一点而论，比起他们的子孙，乃至相隔甚久的我们这些人，算是懂得快活的了，我们作这种一般性的结论，恐怕并不过分。早期移民的子嗣，也就是他们的下一代后人，受清教主义阴影笼罩最深，从而使国家的形象黯淡无光，以致在随后的多年中都不足以清洗干净。我们只好重新学习这门忘却已久的寻欢作乐曲本领。

The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint was the sad grey, brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians- in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deer-skin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear- stood apart, with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners-a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main- who had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide, short trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and, in some instances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed, without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others; smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing, at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket-flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarkably characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a license was allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavourable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice.
市场上的这幅人生图画，虽说基调是英国移民的忧伤的灰色、褐色和黑色，也还固间有一些其它色彩而显得活跃。一群印第安人，身穿有着野蛮人华丽的、绣着奇形怪状图案的鹿皮袍，腰束贝壳缀成的带子，头戴由红色和黄色赭石及羽毛做成的饰物，背挎弓箭，手执石尖长矛，站在一旁，他们脸上那种严肃刚毅的神情，比清教徒们还有过之而无不及。但这些周身涂得花花绿绿的野蛮人，还算不上当场最粗野的景象；更能充分表现这一特色的，是一批从那艘来自拉丁美洲北部海域的船上的水手，他们上岸来就是为了观看庆祝选举日的热闹的。他们是一伙外貌粗鲁的亡命之徒，个个面孔晒得黝黑，蓄着大胡子；又肥又短的裤子在腰间束着宽腰带，往往用一片粗金充当扣子，总是插着一柄长刀，偶尔是短剑。宽檐棕榈叶帽子下面闪着的那双眼睛，即使在心情好、兴致高的时候，也露出一股野兽般的凶光。他们肆元忌惮地违犯着约束着众人的行为准则；公然在差役的鼻子底下吸烟，尽管镇上人每这样吸上一日就要被罚一先令；他们还随心所欲地从衣袋里掏出酒瓶，大口喝着葡萄酒或烈性洒，并且随随便便地递给围周那些目蹬口呆的人们。这充分说明了当年道德标准的缺欠，我们虽然认为十分严格，但对那些浪迹海洋的人却网开一面，不仅容忍他们在陆上为所欲为，而且听凭他们在自己的天地里，更加无法无天。当年的那些水手，几乎与如今的海盗无异。就以这艘船上的船员为例吧，他们虽然不是海上生涯中那种声名狼藉的人物，但用我们的话说，肯定犯有劫掠西班牙商船的罪行，在今天的法庭上，都有处以绞刑的危险。