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His mind was made up that he was not going to spend all of his days, like Tames and Andrew, in bargaining, or all his nights, by candlelight, over long columns of figures. He felt keenly, as his brothers did not, the social stigma attached to those “in trade.” Gerald wanted to be a planter. With the deep hunger of an Irishman who has been a tenant on the lands his people once had owned and hunted, he wanted to see his own acres stretching green before his eyes.
他已下定决心，不要像詹姆斯和安德鲁那样把所有的白天都花费在讨价还价上，或者把所有的夜晚都用来对着灯光检查账目。跟两个哥哥不同，他已深深感到社会上最被人瞧不起的是那些"生意人"。杰拉尔德要当一个地主。他像一个曾经在别人所拥有和猎取的土地上干活的爱尔兰佃农那样，满怀希望看到自己的田地绿油油地从眼前舒展开去。
With a ruthless singleness of purpose, he desired his own house, his own plantation, his own horse, his own slaves. And here in this new country, safe from the twin perils of the land he had left—taxation that ate up crops and barns and the ever-present threat of sudden confiscation—he intended to have them. But having that ambition and bringing it to realization were two different matters, he discovered as time went by. Coastal Georgia was too firmly held by an entrenched aristocracy for him ever to hope to win the place he intended to have.
他无情地、一心一意地追求一个目标，就是要拥有自己的住宅，自己的农场，自己的马匹，自己的奴隶。而在这个新国家里，既然已不像在他所离开的那个国家要冒双重危险，即全部的收获都租税吞掉和随时有可能被突然没收，他就很想得到这些东西了。但是，一个时期以来，他已渐渐发现，怀抱这个雄心和实现这个雄心毕竟是两回事。滨海的佐治亚州是那样牢牢地掌握在一顽强的贵族阶级手中，在这里，他就休想有一天会赢得他所刻意追求的地位。
