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He looked upon the beauty of this cove he had cleared and his three crops growing here. He rarely figured a field in dollars and cents. Although he never wasted a dollar, money didn't mean everything to him. He liked to see the beauty of growing things on the land. He carried this beauty in his mind.
他凝視著這片他開墾出來的美麗的小山谷和他在這里種植的三種農作物。他很少去算計一塊地能賺多少錢。盡管他從不浪費一塊錢，金錢對他來說并不意味著一切。他喜歡看著土地上生長的作物身上的那種美麗。他把這種美麗記在心間。
Once, when we were walking between cornfields on a rainy Sunday afternoon, he pointed to a redbird on its nest in a locust tree, a redbird with shiny red feathers against the dark background of a nest. It was just another bird's nest to me until he whispered, "Ever see anything as pretty as what the raindrops do to that redbird sitting on her dark nest?" From this day on, I have liked to see birds, especially redbirds, sitting on their nests in the rain. But my father was the one to make me see the beauty.
有一次，在一個周日的下午，天下著雨，我們走在玉米地中間，父親指著一顆洋槐樹上鳥巢里的一只紅雀，它那紅得發亮的羽毛與鳥巢的黑色背景相呼應，格外漂亮。這對我來說只是又一個鳥巢而已，這時他低聲說：“雨點打在趴在灰暗鳥窩里的紅雀身上，你見過這樣的美景嗎？”從那一天起，我開始喜歡上了看鳥，尤其是雨中棲于巢中的紅雀。是我的父親讓我發現了這種美。
"A blacksnake is a pretty thing," he once said to me, "so shiny and black in the spring sun after he sheds his winter skin."
“黑蛇是一種美的動物。”他有一次對我說，“它在蛻去了冬天的皮后，在春天陽光的照耀下烏黑發亮。”
He was the first man I ever heard say a snake was pretty. I never forgot his saying it. I can even remember the sumac thicket where he saw the blacksnake.
他是我聽到的第一個說蛇美的人。我至今沒有忘記他說過的這番話。甚至還記得他發現黑蛇的那片灌木叢。
He saw more beauty in trees than any man I have ever known. He would walk through a strange forest laying his hand upon the trees, saying this oak or that pine, that beech or poplar, was a beautiful tree. Then he would single out other trees and say they should be cut. He would always give his reasons for cutting a tree: too many trees on a root stool, too thick, one damaged by fire at the butt, one leaning against another, too many on the ground, or the soil not deep enough above a ledge of rocks to support them.
他比我認識的所有人都更具備發現美的眼光。他常常會穿行在一片陌生的樹林里，手撫在樹上，說這棵橡樹或那棵松樹美，也說這棵山毛櫸或那棵楊樹美。接著他會挑出其他樹，說應該砍掉這些樹。他總能舉出砍掉一棵樹的理由：一根株上長了太多樹，太密了；這棵樹的根部被火燒壞了；這棵樹靠在了另一棵樹上，在一片地上樹太多，或是巖層上的土層不夠深，無法支撐樹木的生長。
