Mr. Hopkins said, "We have a verywide choice of items for sale. Whenever I serve a new customer, I take hispicture. "  Mr. Hopkins pointed toan ancient camera on a table.

    I began to appreciate the lovely itemson sale. I spent a very pleasant hour being shown the commodi-ties inthe shop. Finally,  I bought an antiquejewelry box, a pair of riding boots and a sewing machine.

    I was very excited that I had found sucha good little shop. "I will tell all my friends about your love-ly place." I told the shopkeeper. "Please don't do that, sir. " said Mr.Hopkins. "This is a special place for special people. You must keep thisshop a secret. " Then he took my photograph and handed me the picturestraight away.

    " That was quick! " Iexclaimed. In the picture I looked proud and excited holding the presents I hadbought there.

    On Christmas Day, my friends andrelatives were delighted with the presents I had bought for them.

    For weeks, my brother begged me to takehim to the wonderful little shop. I finally agreed.

We walked along Oxford Street, past thedepartment store and found—nothing. In its place was an empty space beingused as a car park. I checked the area again. There was the music shop, andthere was the department store. In between should have been Hopkins and Son,but it wasn't there.

    Just then, an old policeman came."Are you looking for something, sir?" he asked. "I am lookingfor a little shop called Hopkins and Son. "

    "Oh yes, there was a shop here'once called Hopkins and Son. But it was knocked down over 30 years ago. "

    I looked again at the place, then Ireached into my pocket and took out the photograph that Mr. Hop-kins had takenof me holding my presents in the little shop.

    " How strange!"  I screamed.

Benjamin West, the father of American painting, showed his talent for art when he was only six years of age. But he did not know about brushes before a visitor told him he needed one. In those days , a brush was made from camel's hair. There were no camels nearby. Benjamin decided that cat hair would work instead. He cut some fur from the family cat to make a brush.

    The brush did not last long. Soon Benjamin needed more fur. Before long, the cat began to look ragged （蓬乱）. His father said that the cat must be sick. Benjamin was forced to admit what he had been doing.

    The cat's lot was about to improve.  That year, one of Benjamin's cousins, Mr.Pennington, came to visit. He was impressed with Benjamin's drawings. When he went home, he sent Benjamin a box of paint and some brushes. He also sent six engravings （版画）by an artist. These were the first pictures and first real paint and brushes Benjamin had ever seen. In 1747，when Benjamin was nine years old，Mr.Pennington retured for another visit .He was amazed at what Benjamin had done with his gift.He asked  Benjamin's parents if he might take the boy to Philadelphia for a visit.

In the city, Mr.Pennington gave Benjamin materials for creating oil paintings.The boy began a landscape (风景) painting.Wiliams ,a well-known painter,came to see him work . Wiliams was impressed with Benjamin and gave him two classic books on painting to take home .The books were long and dull. Benjamin could read only a little,having been a poor student.But he later said,”Those two books were my companions by day,and under my pillow at night.”While it is likely that he understood very little of the books,they were his introduction to classical paintings.The nine-year-old boy decided then that he would be an artist.

    “How far is the next village？” the American asks a man standing by the edge of the road. In some countries, because the man realizes that the traveler is tired and eager to reach his destination (目的地), he will politely say “Just down the road.” He thinks this is more encouraging, gentler, and therefore the wanted answer. So the American drives through the night, getting more and more angry, feeling “being tricked”. He thinks the man on purpose lied to him, for obviously he must have known the distance quite well.

    Had conditions been reversed (颠倒过来), the American would have felt he was “cheating” the driver if he had said the next town was not too far, and if he would be sorry to the weary driver, he would say “You have a good way to go yet, it is at least fifteen miles.” The driver might be disappointed, but he would know what to expect.

    Whether to be accurate or polite leads to many misunderstandings between people of different cultures. If you know the situation in advance, it is sometimes easier to recognize the problem.

    Some of the world's most famous musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recently set

    April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music, its significance, and its potential as a unifying voice across cultures.

    Despite the celebrations, though, in the U.S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has failed to connect with younger genera-tions. It's Jason Moran's job to help change that. As the Kennedy Center's artistic adviser for jazz, Moran hopes to widen the audience for jazz, make the music more accessible, and preserve its history and culture.

    “Jazz seems like it's not really a part of the American appetite.” Moran tells National Public Radio's reporter Neal Conan “What I'm hoping to accomplish is that my generation and younger start to reconsider and understand that jazz is not black and white anymore. It's actually color, and it's actually digital.”

    Moran says one of the problems with jazz today is that the entertainment aspect of the music has been lost. “The music can't be presented today the way it was in 1908 or 1958. It has to continue to move, because the way the world works is not the same.” says Moran.

    Last year, Moran worked on a project that arranged Fats Waller's music for a dance party. “just to kind of put it back in the mind that Waller is dance music as much as it is concert music.” says Moran. “For me, it's the recontextualization.

    In music, where does the emotion lie? Are we, as humans, gaining any insight (感悟) on how to talk about ourselves and how something as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context,” says Moran, “so I want to continue those dialogues. Those are the things I want to foster.”

    Have you ever pressed the pedestrian button at a crosswalk and wondered if it really worked? They're called "placebo(安慰剂）buttons"一buttons that mechanically sound and can be pushed, but provide no functionality.

    In New York City, only about 100 of the 1, 000 crosswalk buttons actually function. Crosswalk signals were generally installed before traffic jam had reached today's levels.

    But while their function was taken over by more advanced systems—such as automated lights or traffic sensors — the physical buttons were often kept, rather than being replaced at further expense. Other cities, such as Boston, Dallas and Seattle, have gone through a similar process, leaving them with their own placebo pedestrian buttons. In London, which has 6, 000 traffic signals, pressing the pedestrian button results in a reliable "Wait" light. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the "green man"— or "pedestrian stage" in traffic signal design profession — will appear any sooner.

    "We do have some crossings where the green light comes on automatically, but we still ask people to press the button because that enables accessible features,'' said Glynn Barton, director of network management at Transport for London.

    These features, such as blind tracks and hearable traffic signals, help people with visual disorder cross the road and only function when the button is pressed. As for the lights, a growing number of them are now combined and become a part of an electronic system that detects traffic and adjusts time frequency accordingly (giving priority to buses if they're running late, for example), which means that pressing the button has no effect.

    According to Langer, a Harvard psychologist, placebo buttons give us the illusion (错觉)of control — and something to do in situations where the alternative would be doing nothing. In the case of pedestrian crossings, they may even make us safer by forcing us to pay attention to our surroundings. "They serve a psychological purpose at the very least," she added.

    Owen Williams and his wife befriended their eighty-year-old neighbor, Ken Watson, when they moved into their home in Wales three years ago. When their daughter, Cadi, was born a year later, Watson became a grandfather figure, taking the time to drop off Christmas presents for the child. Watson died in October.

    On Monday, Watson's daughter stopped by the Williams home with a large bag containing 14 wrapped Christmas presents her father had bought and wrapped for Cadi.

    Williams posted notes about what happened on Twitter to spread some Christmas spirit. He wrote that he wasn't sure whether he should give his daughter all the presents now, or hold onto them and give her one a year. Twitter responded in a big way, with many saying the story brought them to tears. So many people weighed in about the gifts, in fact, that Williams made a Twitter poll. So far, more than 55, 000 people have voted on how he should distribute the gifts.

    Williams, who is a social-media consultant, said the majority of people are voting for giving Cadi one present a year. He said he has no idea what is in the packages, but he's leaning toward listening to the will of the voters. "I think we're going to turn it into a Christmas story for our daughter," he said. "We'll do one a year for the next 14 years. It feels like the right thing to do now. If she opens a box of Lego when she's 16 then so be it."

    He said he was struck by how many people have responded by saying their neighbors are virtual strangers to them. "The thing that stands out to me is how few people know their neighbors," Williams said. "People are saying, 'That's so lovely. I don't even know my neighbors.' … This Christmas, take your neighbors a bottle of wine or a small gift, a token. Just say, 'Hi.' You can open a new world like we did."