Lesson 9

How to Grow Old(怎样才能活得老)
In spite of the title, this article will really be on how not to grow old, which, at my time of life, is a much more important subject. My first advice would be to choose your ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the flower of his youth at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty.
尽管标题如此，但我真正要讲的却是如何阻止变老，对于活到我这个岁数的人来说，这是更重要的主题。首先，我建议你慎重地选择你的祖辈父辈。虽然我父母早逝，但在选择其他祖辈的时候，我很明智。这是真的！我外祖父67岁逝世，正值盛年，我其他三个祖父母都生活了80多个春秋。
Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off. A great-grandmother of mine, who was a friend of Gibbon, lived to the age of ninety-two, and to her last day remained a terror to all her descendants. My maternal grandmother, after having nine children who survived, one who died in infancy, and many miscarriages, as soon as she became a widow devoted herself to women's higher education.
在远房的上辈中，我只发现一个人并不长寿，他死于一种现在很罕见的疾病，叫做“脑梗塞”。我的一个曾祖母，是吉朋的朋友。她活到了92岁，临终时所有的后辈都很敬重并爱戴她。我外祖母的孩子，九个存活下来，一个死于婴儿时期，还有许多流产了。此后，她成了寡妇，致力于女子高等教育。
She was one of the founders of Girton College, and worked hard at opening the medical profession to women. She used to relate how she met in Italy an elderly gentleman who was looking very sad. She inquired the cause of his melancholy and he said that he had just parted from his two grand-children.
她是格顿女子学院的创立人之一，并为实现女性从事医疗职业而尽心竭力。她曾说过在意大利遇到过一位神情忧伤的年老绅士。问他为什么伤心，老人回答说他刚跟他的两个孙孩儿告别。
"Good gracious," she exclaimed, "I have seventy-two grandchildren, and if I were sad each time I parted from one of them, I should have a dismal existence!" "Madre snaturale," he replied. But speaking as one of the seventy-two, I prefer her recipe. After the age of eighty she found she had some difficulty in getting to sleep, so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a. m. in reading popular science.
“天呐！”我外祖母感叹道，“我有72个孙子孙女，要是每次我向其中一个告别都难掩忧伤的话，我该有一种多么凄凉可怕的生活啊！”“多么伟大的母亲啊！”他答道。但是作为72个孩子之一的我来说，我倒赞成她的想法。80岁之后，外祖母发现自己难以入睡，所以她习惯性地在午夜至三点阅读科普书籍。
I do not believe that she ever had time to notice that she was growing old. This, I think, is the proper recipe for remaining young. If you have wide and keen interests and activities in which you can still be effective, you will have no reason to think about the merely statistical fact of the number of years you have already lived, still less of the probable brevity of your future.
我相信她没有时间来注意她的衰老。我认为这就是保持年轻的适合之道。如果你有广泛的活动和浓厚的兴趣，并且你能从中受益，那么你去思考你已经活了多少年这种纯粹的统计数据是毫无意义的，去想你还有多少年可活就更荒谬了。
As regards health, I have nothing useful to say since I have little experience of illness. I eat and drink whatever I like, and sleep when I cannot keep awake. I never do anything whatever on the ground that it is good for health, though in actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.