A letter arrives over 100 years later

山東 李全忠

被寄出后兜兜轉轉，一封信歷經百余年終達目的地。

主題語境：社會 篇幅：345詞 建議用時：6分鐘

1 A letter written in February 1916 has arrived at a flat in south London more than 100 years later.The envelope,which was sent when King George V was on the throne, arrived at Finlay Glen's flat on Hamlet Road, Crystal Palace,in 2021 and was pretty fascinating.He said,“We were obviously pretty surprised and mystified as to how it could have been sat around for more than 100 years.”

2 Although it can be a crime to open mail not addressed to you, the theatre director said he felt it was“fair game”to open once he realised it was from 1916,not 2016.

3 The letter was written to“my dear Katie”, the wife of local stamp celebrity Oswald Marsh, according to Stephen Oxford, editor ofThe Norwood Review, a quarterly local history magazine.

4 It was written by family friend Christabel Mennell, the daughter of a wealthy and influential local tea businessman Henry Tuke Mennell,while she was on holiday in Bath.In the letter, Mennell stated she felt“quite ashamed of myself after saying what I did”,and that she had been feeling“sad here with a very heavy cold”.

5 Oxford said,“It's very unusual and actually quite exciting in terms of giving us a lead into local history and people who lived in Norwood, which was a very popular place for the upper middle classes in the late 1800s.”

6 “Crystal Palace generated a huge influx (涌入) of very wealthy people and finding out about someone who moved to the area for possible reasons is absolutely fascinating.”

7 When asked what he would do if the relatives of the sender or the receiver got in touch,Glen replied,“It's an amazing piece of their family history that has turned up—if they want to,they can come round.”

8 A Royal Mail spokesperson said,“Incidents like this happen very occasionally, and we are uncertain what happened in this instance.We appreciate that people will be interested in the history of this letter from 1916, but we have no further crucial information on what might have happened.”

Reading Check

Vocabulary1.What does the underlined word“mystified”mean in paragraph 1?

A.Touched.

B.Puzzled.

C.Motivated.

D.Designed.

Detail2.What did Finlay Glen plan to do after receiving the letter?

A.He handed it over to the post office.

B.He apologized for what he had done.

C.He opened it without permission.

D.He hid the letter for three years.

Detail3.What do we know about the letter's writer Mennell?

A.Her father did business very successfully.

B.She wrote the letter for medical care.

C.She was the wife of a theatre director.

D.She was good at doing business.

Inference 4.How did the spokesperson think of the incident?

A.He sang praise for it.

B.He thought it full of debate.

C.He considered it to be a joke.

D.He judged it to be unusual.

Language Study

Ⅰ.Difficult sentence in the text

The envelope, which was sent when King George V was on the throne, arrived at Finlay Glen's flat on Hamlet Road,Crystal Palace,in 2021 and was pretty fascinating.這封在喬治五世國王在位時寄出的信于2021年送達水晶宮哈姆雷特路的芬利·格倫所住的公寓，趣味十足。

【點石成金】本句是一個主從復合句，which 引導非限制性定語從句，修飾先行詞the envelope；when引導時間狀語從句。

Ⅱ.Text-centered chunks

arrive at 到達

sit around 閑坐；圍坐

on holiday 在度假

be ashamed of 為……感到羞愧

in terms of 從……方面（來說）；從……的角度

get in touch 取得聯系

turn up 調高；出現