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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.
他凝视着这片他开垦出来的美丽的小山谷和他在这里种植的三种农作物。他很少去算计一块地能赚多少钱。尽管他从不浪费一块钱，金钱对他来说并不意味着一切。他喜欢看着土地上生长的作物身上的那种美丽。他把这种美丽记在心间。
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，在一个周日的下午，天下着雨，我们走在玉米地中间，父亲指着一颗洋槐树上鸟巢里的一只红雀，它那红得发亮的羽毛与鸟巢的黑色背景相呼应，格外漂亮。这对我来说只是又一个鸟巢而已，这时他低声说：“雨点打在趴在灰暗鸟窝里的红雀身上，你见过这样的美景吗？”从那一天起，我开始喜欢上了看鸟，尤其是雨中栖于巢中的红雀。是我的父亲让我发现了这种美。
"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."
“黑蛇是一种美的动物。”他有一次对我说，“它在蜕去了冬天的皮后，在春天阳光的照耀下乌黑发亮。”
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.
他是我听到的第一个说蛇美的人。我至今没有忘记他说过的这番话。甚至还记得他发现黑蛇的那片灌木丛。
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.
他比我认识的所有人都更具备发现美的眼光。他常常会穿行在一片陌生的树林里，手抚在树上，说这棵橡树或那棵松树美，也说这棵山毛榉或那棵杨树美。接着他会挑出其他树，说应该砍掉这些树。他总能举出砍掉一棵树的理由：一根株上长了太多树，太密了；这棵树的根部被火烧坏了；这棵树靠在了另一棵树上，在一片地上树太多，或是岩层上的土层不够深，无法支撑树木的生长。
