I expressed my satisfaction.
"Quite right, sir, quite right; it'll do for a makeshift (将就), I'm bound to say.
"But wait till you see what we'll get up for you on your own measure. Come, Tod, book and pen; get at it. Length of leg, 32" -- and so on.
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Before I could get in a word he had measured me, and was giving orders for dress-suits, morning suits, shirts, and all sorts of things.
When I got a chance I said:
"But, my dear sir, I can't give these orders, unless you can wait indefinitely (无限期地), or change the bill."
"Indefinitely! It's a weak word, sir, a weak word. Eternally (永久地) -- that's the word, sir.
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"Tod, rush these things through, and send them to the gentleman's address without any waste of time.
"Let the minor customers wait. Set down the gentleman's address and --"
"I'm changing my quarters (住处). I will drop in and leave the new address."
"Quite right, sir, quite right. One moment -- let me show you out, sir. There -- good day, sir, good day."
Well, don't you see what was bound to happen?
I drifted naturally into buying whatever I wanted, and asking for change.
Within a week I was sumptuously (豪华的) equipped with all needful comforts and luxuries, and was housed in an expensive private hotel in Hanover Square.
I took my dinners there, but for breakfast I stuck by Harris's humble feeding house, where I had got my first meal on my million-pound bill.
I was the making of Harris. The fact had gone all abroad that the foreign crank (怪人) who carried million-pound bills in his vest pocket was the patron saint of the place. {1}
That was enough.
From being a poor, struggling, little hand-to-mouth (勉强维持的) enterprise, it had become celebrated, and overcrowded with customers.
Harris was so grateful that he forced loans upon me, and would not be denied; and so, pauper (穷人) as I was, I had money to spend, and was living like the rich and the great.
I judged that there was going to be a crash by and by, but I was in now and must swim across or drown (淹死).
You see there was just that element of impending (即将发生的) disaster to give a serious side, a sober side, yes, a tragic side, to a state of things which would otherwise have been purely ridiculous. {2}
In the night, in the dark, the tragedy part was always to the front, and always warning, always threatening; and so I moaned and tossed (辗转反侧), and sleep was hard to find.
But in the cheerful daylight the tragedy element faded out and disappeared, and I walked on air, and was happy to giddiness, to intoxication (陶醉), you may say.
And it was natural; for I had become one of the notorieties (著名人物) of the metropolis of the world, and it turned my head, not just a little, but a good deal.
You could not take up a newspaper, English, Scotch, or Irish, without finding in it one or more references to the "vest-pocket million-pounder" and his latest doings and saying.
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At first, in these mentions, I was at the bottom of the personal-gossip column;
next, I was listed above the knights, next above the baronets (准男爵), next above the barons (男爵), and so on, and so on, climbing steadily, as my notoriety augmented (增大), until I reached the highest altitude possible,
and there I remained, taking precedence of all dukes not royal, and of all ecclesiastics except the primate (大主教) of all England. {3}
But mind, this was not fame; as yet I had achieved only notoriety (名声).
Then came the climaxing stroke -- the accolade, so to speak -- which in a single instant transmuted (变化) the perishable dross of notoriety into the enduring gold of fame: Punch caricatured me! {4}
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Yes, I was a made man now; my place was established.
I might be joked about still, but reverently (恭敬地), not hilariously, not rudely; I could be smiled at, but not laughed at. The time for that had gone by.
Punch pictured me all aflutter with rags, dickering (讨价还价) with a beef-eater (伦敦塔的守卫) for the Tower of London.
Well, you can imagine how it was with a young fellow who had never been taken notice of before, and now all of a sudden couldn't say a thing that wasn't taken up and repeated everywhere;
couldn't stir abroad without constantly overhearing the remark flying from lip to lip, "There he goes; that's him!"
couldn't take his breakfast without a crowd to look on; couldn't appear in an operabox without concentrating there the fire of a thousand lorgnettes (长柄望远镜).
Why, I just swam in glory all day long -- that is the amount of it.
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You know, I even kept my old suit of rags, and every now and then appeared in them, so as to have the old pleasure of buying trifles, and being insulted, and then shooting the scoffer (嘲笑者) dead with the million-pound bill.
But I couldn't keep that up. The illustrated (有插图的) papers made the outfit so familiar that when I went out in it I was at once recognized and followed by a crowd, and if I attempted a purchase the man would offer me his whole shop on credit before I could pull my note on him.
About the tenth day of my fame I went to fulfil my duty to my flag by paying my respects to the American minister.
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He received me with the enthusiasm proper in my case, upbraided (责备) me for being so tardy (缓慢的) in my duty,
and said that there was only one way to get his forgiveness, and that was to take the seat at his dinner-party that night made vacant by the illness of one of his guests.
I said I would, and we got to talking.
It turned out that he and my father had been schoolmates in boyhood, Yale students together later, and always warm friends up to my father's death.
So then he required me to put in at his house all the odd time I might have to spare, and I was very willing, of course.