输出Sherwood Anderson 的The Egg原文

The egg, which had been laid on a hot summer's day in a nest of clay by the side of a dusty road, lay there unnoticed. No one passed that way, and the sun beating down on the nest and on the egg which lay in it caused the clay to harden till it became just like a small, coarse earthenware jar. The baby bird inside the egg was nearly dead. Its little heart beat feebly, its wings were cramped and its lungs choked with the thick, heavy air which had been imprisoned with it in the egg when the clay hardened about it.

But one day a man came that way. He was a poet and a dreamer. He sat down beside the nest and looked at the egg. He thought it was a strange thing to find beside the dusty road. He picked it up and put it to his ear. He heard the faint beating of the little heart inside, and he knew that there was life there, struggling for release.

He carried the egg to his home, which was a small house in a village by the edge of a great forest. There he placed it in a box filled with soft, warm grass, and he waited. Day after day he watched the egg, and at last, one morning, he saw a tiny crack appear in the hard shell. He knew that the little bird was trying to break its way out.

For hours he watched, and at last the bird emerged, weak and trembling, but alive. The man took it in his hands and held it close to his heart. He knew that it was his duty to care for the little creature until it could fly away and take care of itself.

And so he did. Day after day he fed it and tended it, and as the little bird grew stronger, it repaid him with its love and its songs. It would sit on his shoulder and sing to him, and the man knew that he had found a friend for life.

Years passed, and the man grew old. One day he died, and the little bird was left alone. But it remembered the love and care which the man had given it, and it continued to sing, spreading happiness and joy wherever it went.

And so it was that the egg, which had been laid on a hot summer's day in a nest of clay by the side of a dusty road, had brought happiness and love into the life of a man, and had left behind a legacy of joy which would live on long after the man was gone