American Ghosts and Old World Wonders 精彩片段：
Alice in Prague or The Curious Room-2
The bell ceases. The lion sighs with relief and lays his head once more upon his heavy paws: "Now I can sleep!"
Then, from under the bed curtains, on either side of the bed, begins to pour a veritable torrent that quickly forms into dark, viscous, livid puddles on the floor.
But, before you accuse the Archduke of the unspeakable, dip your finger in the puddle and lick it.
Delicious!
For these are sticky puddles of freshly squeezed grape juice, and apple juice, and peach juice, juice of plum, pear, or raspberry, strawberry, cherry ripe, blackberry, black currant, white currant, red. . . The room brims with the delicious ripe scent of summer pudding, even though, outside, on the frozen tower, the raven still creaks out his melancholy call:
"Poor Toms a-cold!"
And it is midwinter.
Night was. Widow Night, an old woman in mourning, with big, black wings, came beating against the window; they kept her out with lamps and candles.
When he went back into the laboratory, Ned Kelly found that Dr Dee had nodded off to sleep as the old man often did nowadays towards the end of the day, the crystal ball having rolled from palm to lap as he lay back in the black oak chair, and now, as he shifted at the impulse of a dream, it rolled again off his lap, down on to the floor, where it landed with a soft thump on the rushes -- no harm done -- and the little calico cat disabled it at once with a swift blow of her right paw, then began to play with it, batting it that way and this before she administered the coup de grace.
With a gusty sigh, Kelly once more addressed his scrying disc, although today he felt barren of invention. He reflected ironically that, if just so much as one wee feathery angel ever, even the one time, should escape the scrying disc and flutter into the laboratory, the cat would surely get it.
Not, Kelly knew, that such a thing was possible.
If you could see inside Kellys brain, you would discover a calculating machine.
Widow Night painted the windows black.
Then, all at once, the cat made a noise like sharply crumpled paper, a noise of inquiry and concern. A rat? Kelly turned to look. The cat, head on one side, was considering, with such scrupulous intensity that its prickled ears met at the tips, something lying on the floor beside the crystal ball, so that at first it looked as if the glass eye had shed a tear.