文档介绍：The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild
by Jack London
1
The Call of the Wild
CHAPTER I
Into the Primitive
"Old longings nomadic leap, Chafing at custom's chain;
Again from its brumal sleep Wakens the ferine strain."
Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that
trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide- water dog,
strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San
Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a
yellow metal, and because steamship and panies were
booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland.
These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs,
with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them
from the frost.
Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley.
Judge Miller's place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half
hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the
wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was
approached by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-
spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At
the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front.
There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth,
rows of vine-clad servants' cottages, an endless and orderly array of
outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches.
Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big
cement tank where Judge Miller's boys took their morning plunge and
kept cool in the hot afternoon.
And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and
here he had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other
dogs, There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did
not count. They came and went, resided in the populous kennels, or
lived obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of