The carvings on the cabin have lost lustre (faded) long before , the slates on the road have been outworn to their slipperiness by to-and-fros of generations.
Every historian — sometimes unconsciously, but always inevitably — must have put to himself the question: How long could such-or-such an outworn system last?
早已泛旧，青
板也被几代
磨得光滑。
（下）
——有时
不自觉地， 
