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From Indian Trail to Air Mail Alice T. Paine
從印度鐵路到航空郵政 愛麗絲·T·派恩
When the postman leaves the mail at your door, he is just one of over 350,000 people
當郵遞員將郵件放在你家門口時，他只是35萬多名郵遞員當中的一位，
who are busy every day seeing that the mail is delivered throughout our country.
他們每天忙碌著為全國民眾寄郵件。
The post office in your town is one of the 50,000 post offices in the United States.
你城鎮上的郵政局也是美國5萬個郵政局中的一個。
Over fifteen billion stamps are used every year. Let us see how this great business of message-carrying
每年使用的郵票超150億張，看看如此龐大的郵政業是如何
has grown since the days when our country was young. In the early days of our country,
發展的，自從剛剛建國開始，在美國初期，
the colonists lived in little settlements along the Atlantic coast all the way from Massachusetts to Carolina.
殖民者居住在大西洋沿岸的小塊殖民地上，從馬賽諸塞到加州。
They were separated from each other by dense forests and wide rivers. England, the land from which they had come,
他們被茂密的森林和寬闊的河流所隔絕，他們來自英格蘭，
was far away across the Atlantic Ocean. There were no telephones or telegraphs or ocean cables or trains or highways,
英格蘭距離大西洋很遙遠，當時沒有電話，電報，海地電纜，鐵路或是高速，
and of course there were no radios or airplanes. Today, if we wish to send a message,
當然也沒有無線電或飛機，今天如果我們希望傳遞信息，
we can have it delivered anywhere in the United States within a few hours.
我們可以在幾個小時送達到美國各處。
If any important event happens, we may know of it within a few minutes.
如果發生了重大事件，我們可以在幾分鐘內知道。
We have sent messages to Byrd at the South Pole,
我們曾在南極向博德發送信息，
and we have received messages from him over thousands of miles of ice and snow, mountains and seas.
信息穿越了數千英里的冰雪，山峰和海洋，我們接收到了他的信息。
It is hard for us to realize how different things were in the early days.
我們很難想象這在早前是多么的不一樣。
When George Washington died at Mount Vernon, the news did not reach Boston for ten days.
當喬治·華盛頓在弗農山莊逝世時，消息十天還沒有到達波士頓。
When a new president was elected, people did not hear of it for over a month.
當新任總統當選時，人們一個多月也不知道這個消息。
If you lived then and your father or mother or brother or sister went on a journey,
如果你生活在那時，你的父親或母親，或兄弟姐妹出門旅行，
you could not hear from the traveler for many a day.
你或許好幾天收不到旅行者的信息。
