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A very late Christmas card 遲來九十三年的耶誕卡
Tuesday, Dec 25, 2007,Page 13
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Santa Claus reading letters sent by children from all over the world, in front of his home in the Arctic Circle, in Finnish Lapland, Nov. 2, 2000.
二ＯＯＯ年十一月二日，耶誕老人在位於北極圈內的芬蘭拉布蘭自家門前，閱讀世界各地小朋友寄來的信。照片︰歐新社
PHOTO: EPA
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A postcard with a color drawing of Santa Claus and a young girl was mailed in 1914, but arrived in northwest Kansas, US, this month.
The Christmas card was dated Dec. 23, 1914, and mailed to Ethel Martin of Oberlin. The card was from her cousins in Alma, Nebraska.
It's a mystery where it spent most of the last 100 years.
"It's surprising that it never got thrown away," Oberlin postmaster Steve Schultz said. "How someone found it, I don't know."
Ethel Martin is dead, but Schultz said the post office wanted to get the card to a relative. So the 93-year-old card ended up with Bernice Martin, Ethel's sister-in-law. She said she believed the card had been found somewhere in Illinois.
"That's all we know," she said. "But it is kind of curious. We'd like to know how it got down there."
The card was placed inside another envelope with a modern postage stamp for the trip to Oberlin. The one-cent postage stamp from 1914 would not have covered it, Martin said.
"We don't know much about it," she said. "But wherever they kept it, it was in perfect shape." (AP)
一張畫有耶誕老人和一位少女的彩色明信片在一九一四年寄出，但直到本月才被送達美國堪薩斯州西北部。
這張寄給歐柏林的艾賽兒．馬丁的耶誕卡上註明的日期是一九一四年十二月二十三日，由她的表親從內布拉斯加州愛馬市寄出。
這張卡片過去近百年來的行蹤成謎。
「令人驚訝的是，這張卡片竟然都沒被丟掉，」歐柏林郵政局長史提夫．史高茲說：「我也不知道它是怎麼被人發現的。」
艾賽兒．馬丁已經過世了，但史高茲說郵局希望將卡片轉交給她的親人，因此這張九十三歲的卡片轉到了艾賽兒的妯娌波妮絲．馬丁的手中，她認為這張卡片是在伊利諾州的某處被發現的。
「我們只知道這些，」她說：「但這件事有點古怪，我們想知道卡片是怎麼轉到這裡來的。」
馬丁說，這張卡片是被放在另一個貼有現今郵票的信封裡寄到歐柏林的，當年卡片上的一分郵票郵資不足以寄到這裡。
「我們知道的不多，」她說：「但不管這張卡片之前在哪，它被保存的相當完整。」（美聯社／翻譯：袁星塵）
| TODAY'S WORDS 今日單字 |
| 1. postcard n.
明信片 (ming2 xin4 pian4)
例: I got a postcard from Spain.
(我收到一張從西班牙寄來的明信片。)
2. mail v.i./v.t.
郵寄 (you2 ji4)
例: I mailed the parcel last Thursday.
(我上週四郵寄了一個包裹。)
3. sister-in-law n.
妯娌 (zhou2 li3)
例: My aunt May is my mother's sister-in-law.
(我的梅嬸嬸和我媽是妯娌。)
4. postage stamp n.
郵票 (you2 piao4)
例: A first class postage stamp costs 26p.
(平信郵票一張二十六便士。) |
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