I award this championship only after laborious research and incessant prayer. I have seen, I believe, all of the most unlovely towns of the world; they are all to be found in the United States. I have seen the mill towns of decomposing New England and the desert towns of Utah, Arizona and Texas. I am familiar with the back streets of Newark, Brooklyn and Chicago, and have made scientific explorations to Camden, N. J. and Newport News, Va. Safe in a Pullman,I have whirled through the g1oomy, Godforsaken villages of Iowa and Kansas, and the malarious tidewater hamlets of Georgia. I have been to Bridgeport, Conn., and to Los Angeles. But nowhere on this earth, at home or abroad, have I seen anything to compare to the villages that huddle aloha the line of the Pennsylvania from the Pittsburgh yards to Greensburg. They are incomparable in color, and they are incomparable in design. It is as if some titanic and aberrant genius,uncompromisingly inimical to man, had devoted all the ingenuity of Hell to the making of them. They show grotesqueries of ugliness that, in retrospect ,become almost diabolical.One cannot imagine mere human beings concocting such dreadful things, and one can scarcely imagine human beings bearing life in them.
我是在经过一番苦心探究和不断祈祷后才将这顶丑陋之最的桂冠封赠于威斯特摩兰县的。我自信我已见到过世界上所有的丑陋之极的城镇，它们全都在美国。我目睹了日趋衰落的新英格兰地区的工业城镇，也目睹了犹他州、亚利桑那州和得克萨斯州的荒漠城市。我熟悉纽瓦克、布鲁克林和芝加哥的偏街僻巷，并曾对新泽西州的卡姆登和弗吉尼亚州的纽波特纽斯作过科学的考察。我曾安安稳稳地坐着普尔曼卧车，周游了衣阿华州和堪萨斯州那些昏暗凄凉的村镇以及佐治亚州那些乌烟瘴气的沿海渔村。我到过康涅狄格州的布里奇港，还去过洛杉矶市。然而，在世界上的任何一个地方，无论国内国外，我从未见到过任何东西可以与那些拥挤在宾夕法尼亚铁路从匹兹堡调车场到格林斯堡路段沿线的村庄相比。它们无论在色彩上还是在样式上都是无与伦比的。仿佛有什么与人类不共戴天的、能力超常的鬼才，费尽心机，动员魔鬼王国里的鬼斧神工，才造出这些丑陋无比的房屋来。这些房屋不仅丑陋而且奇形怪状，使人回头一看，顿觉它们已变成一个个青面獠牙的恶魔。人们无法想象单凭人的力量如何能造出如此可怕的东西来，也很难想象居然还有人类栖居其中并在那里生儿育女，繁殖人类。