"Lee, Harper - To Kill A Mockingbird" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lee Harper)

1960

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee






Copyright (C) 1960 by Harper Lee
Copyright (C) renewed 1988 by Harper Lee
Published by arrangement with McIntosh and Otis, Inc.



DEDICATION

for Mr. Lee and Alice
in consideration of Love & Affection



Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
Charles Lamb


PART ONE
1

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken
at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem's fears of never being able to
play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his
injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he
stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body,
his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn't have cared less, so
long as he could pass and punt.
When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them,
we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I
maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years
my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the
summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo
Radley come out.
I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really
began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn't run the Creeks up
the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and