On the Makaloa Mat(马克洛岛上的故事)
Jack London
ON THE MAKALOA MAT
Unlike the women of most warm races, those of Hawaii age well
and nobly. With no pretence of make-up or cunning concealment of
time's inroads, the woman who sat under the hau tree might have
been permitted as much as fifty years by a judge competent anywhere
over the world save in Hawaii. Yet her children and her
grandchildren, and Roscoe Scandwell who had been her husband for
forty years, knew that she was sixty-four and would be sixty-five
come the next twenty-second day of June. But she did not look it,
despite the fact that she thrust reading glasses on her nose as she
read her magazine and took them off when her gaze desired to wander
in the direction of the half-dozen children playing on the
lawn.
It was a noble situation—noble as the ancient hau tree, the size
of…