Donde
se describe a la familia Grangerford, de la solemnidad de los padres y la
categoría de la familia. Del original ingles “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, de Mark Twain
COL. GRANGERFORD was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over; and so was his
family. He was well born, as the saying
is, and that's worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas
said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town;
and pap he always said it, too, though he warn't no more quality than a mudcat
himself. Col. Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and
had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was clean
shaved every morning all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of
lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows,
and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was
looking out of caverns at you, as you may say.
His forehead was high, and his hair was black and straight and hung to
his shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on
a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it
hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he wore a blue tail-coat with
brass buttons on it. He carried a
mahogany cane with a silver head to it.
There warn't no frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn't ever
loud. He was as kind as he could be—you
could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see;
but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning
begun
to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first,
and find out what the matter was afterwards.
He didn't ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners—everybody was
always good-mannered where he was.
Everybody loved to have him around, too; he was sunshine most always—I
mean he made it seem like good weather.
When he turned into a cloudbank it was awful dark for half a minute, and
that was enough; there wouldn't nothing go wrong again for a week.
When him and the
old lady come down in the morning all the family got up out of their chairs and
give them good-day, and didn't set down again till they had set down. Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where
the decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and he
held it in his hand and waited till Tom's and Bob's was mixed, and then they
bowed and said, "Our duty to you, sir, and madam;" and THEY bowed the
least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank, all three, and
Bob and Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the mite of whisky or
apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and give it to me and Buck, and
we drank to the old people too.
Bob was the
oldest and Tom next—tall, beautiful men with very broad shoulders and brown
faces, and long black hair and black eyes.
They dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman,
and wore broad Panama hats.
Then there was
Miss Charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud and grand, but as good
as she could be when she warn't stirred up; but when she was she had a look
that would make you wilt in your tracks, like her father. She was beautiful.
So was her
sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind. She was gentle and sweet like a dove, and she
was only twenty.
Each person had
their own nigger to wait on them—Buck too.
My nigger had a monstrous easy time, because I warn't used to having
anybody do anything for me, but Buck's was on the jump most of the time.
This was all
there was of the family now, but there used to be more—three sons; they got
killed; and Emmeline that died.
The old
gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers. Sometimes a stack of
people would come there, horseback, from ten or fifteen mile around, and stay
five or six days, and have such junketings round about and on the river, and
dances and picnics in the woods daytimes, and balls at the house nights. These people was mostly kinfolks of the
family. The men brought their guns with
them. It was a handsome lot of quality,
I tell you.
There was
another clan of aristocracy around there—five or six families—mostly of the
name of Shepherdson. They was as
high-toned and well born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords. The Shepherdsons and Grangerfords used the
same steamboat landing, which was about two mile above our house; so sometimes
when I went up there with a lot of our folks I used to see a lot of the
Shepherdsons there on their fine horses… (Excerpts from The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain)
Vocabulario
Mudcat: bagre
Mite: un poco
Tumblers: vasos
Stirred up: agitada
Wilt: desarmarte
Junketings: fiestas
Kinfolks: parientes
Para leer la síntesis en castellano:
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