Yet was this half-horrible stolidity in him, involving, too, as it appeared, an all-ramifying heartlessness;— yet was it oddly dashed at times, with an old, crutch-like, antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not unstreaked now and then with a certain grizzled wittiness; such as might have served to pass the time during the midnight watch on the bearded forecastle of Noah's ark. Was it that this old carpenter had been a life-long wanderer, whose much rolling, to and fro, not only had gathered no moss; but what is more, had rubbed off whatever small outward clingings might have originally pertained to him? He was a stript abstract; an unfractioned integral; uncompromised as a new-born babe; living without premeditated reference to this world or the next. You might almost say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of unintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to work so much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he had been tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all these, even or uneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one, must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers.
不过，正是他这种有点可怕的迟钝，就不免使他象个十分不近人情的人——然而，说也奇怪，他有时也很健谈，能够显出一种古朴的、转弯抹角的诙谐突梯，时不时说出一种半新半旧的俏皮话来；这俏皮话，在挪亚方舟上那个古老的船头楼值夜时，倒是可以解解闷的。这个老木匠是不是个终身的飘泊者，这样颠沛飘泊得不但连苔藓都没有找到，而且把他本来那点外貌也给磨掉了呢？他可真是个彻底的心不在焉的人；一个没有零数的整体；象一个初生婴儿似的冥顽；既不考虑到今生，也不估计到来世地生活着。你简直会认为，他这种奇特的冥顽就不免是一种愚钝；因为在他的各种工作中，他并不象是凭理智，或凭本能干的，也不完全是因为他曾拜过师傅，或者是理智，本能，拜师傅都各有一点；而完全是凭不闻不问、不加思索的依样画葫芦的方法。他是个纯粹的手工匠；他的头脑（如果说他有头脑的话），一定是早就顺着脉络通到他的手指头了。