Mrs. White lived in a town of England. Her husband died three years ago and one of her children worked in the capital and the other three lived in another town. Her husband didn't leave her much money and she had to live a simple (简朴) life. Sometimes her children went to see her during their holidays, but they stayed with her for only two or three days.

    One winter morning the old woman got up early. She was going to buy some food in a shop. And when she came out, she found there was much snow in the street. She had to sweep it away. And suddenly she found a dying dog at the comer of the house. She picked it up and took it into the house quickly. She put it near the fire and gave it some milk and bread. At first the poor dog ate nothing and that afternoon it drank some milk and three days later it was all right. Now the old woman found it was a beautiful dog. And she liked it very much and took it everywhere she went. A week later she went shopping with her dog. At a bus stop a young man was eating fish and chips. The little dog became very excited at the smell of the man's lunch and began jumping up at him.

    “Do you mind if I throw it a bit?'' asked the young man.

    “Not at all,” answered Mrs. White.

    Having heard this, he picked up the dog and threw it over the wall.

    Once upon a time there were two friends who lived in a palace and worked in the service of the king. One of the two boys knew a girl he liked so much that he wanted to give her a present.

    One day, when he was walking with his friend in the main palace hall, he saw a big vase filled with the most beautiful flowers. He decided to take one to give to the girl, thinking that no one would see him do so except his friend. He did the same thing the next day, and the next, and the next... until, one day, the king noticed how few flowers were left in the vase. He was so angry that he called everyone in the palace to come together in the hall.

    When they were all before the king, the boy thought he should say it was he who had taken the flowers. However, his friend told him to be quiet, because the king would be terribly angry with him. The boy was filled with fear, but when the king came near, he decided to confess.

    As soon as the boy said that he had done it, the king went red with anger, but on hearing what the boy had done with the flowers, a smile appeared on the king's face, and he said, “I couldn't have thought of a better use for my flowers.”

    And from that day, the boy and the king became great friends. They went to the vase and took two of those wonderful flowers, one for the girl, and the other for the queen.

    American schools do not have separate classes for boys and girls. If boys want to cook or to sew, they can learn these things in classes that are no longer just for girls. If girls want to repair cars, they can now learn this in school. Most students like to have boys and girls on the same baseball team.

    Many boys and girls dress alike in school. They wear blue jeans and sport shirts. Some have long hair and some have short hair. Sometimes a boy has longer hair than a girl.

    Even the language is different. Students learn to say fire fighter instead of fireman, police officer instead of policeman, and letter carrier instead of mailman. A person does not need to be a man to fight a fire or to deliver the mail.

    Most people think that these changes are great. They give all people an equal chance to be happy and to do what they want to do with their lives. Fathers like to tell their sons that they can grow up to be president. Today, mothers can tell the same things to their daughters.

    If English means endless new words, difficult grammar and sometimes strange pronunciation, you are wrong. Haven't you noticed that you have become smarter since you started to learn a language?

    According to a new study by a British university, learning a second language can lead to an increase in your brain power. Researchers found that learning other languages changes grey matter. This is the area of the brain which processes information. It is similar to the way that exercise builds muscles.

    The study also found the effect is greater when the younger people learn a second language. A team led by Dr. Andrea Mechelli, from University College London, took a group of Britons who only spoke English. They were compared with a group of "early bilinguals" who had learnt a second language before the age of five, as well as a number of later learners.

    Scans showed that grey matter density (密度) in the brain was greater in bilinguals than in people without a second language. But the longer a person waited before mastering a new language, the smaller the difference.

    "Our findings suggest that the structure of the brain is changed by the experience of learning a second language," said the scientists.

    It means that the change itself increases the ability to learn.

    Professor Dylan Vaughan Jones of the University of Wales, has researched the link between bilingualism and maths skills. "Having two languages gives you two windows on the world and makes the brain more flexible (灵活的)," he said. "You are actually going beyond language and have a better understanding of different ideas."

    The findings were matched in a study of native Italian speakers who had learned English as a second language between the ages of two and thirty-four. Reading, writing, and comprehension were all tested. The results showed that the younger they started to learn, the better. "Studying a language means you get an entrance to another world," explained the scientists.

Three Feet From Gold

    Darby's uncle was caught by the "gold fever" in the gold—rush days, and went west to dig and grow rich. After months of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore (矿石). He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. So, with the "strike", he returned home. And with the help of Darby, he borrowed a lot of money. After buying the machinery and having it shipped, Uncle and Darby went back to work the mine.

    The first car of ore was mined. And the returns proved they had one of the richest mines in Colorado! Down went the drills! Up went the hopes of Uncle and Darby!

    Then something happened! The vein (矿脉) of gold ore disappeared! They drilled on, but all in vain. Finally, they decided to quit and sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars. The junk man called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer's calculations showed that the vein would be found just three feet from where the Darbys had stopped drilling! The junk man took millions of dollars in the vein, because he knew enough to seek experts' advice before giving up.

    Most of the money which went into the machinery was borrowed through the efforts of Darby, who was then a very young man. The money came from his relatives because of their faith in him. He paid back every dollar of it, although he was years in doing so.

    Long afterwards, Mr. Darby made another discovery that desire can be changed into gold. This discovery came after he went into the business of selling life insurance. Remembering that he lost a huge fortune, for he stopped three feet from gold, Darby profited by the experience in his chosen work, saying to himself, "I stopped three feet from gold, but I never stop because men say 'no' when I ask them to buy insurance."

    Darby sold more than million dollars in life insurance annually. He owes his "stick-ability" to the lesson he learned from his "quit-ability" in the gold mining business.

If any New Yorker of Asian descent( 血统) needs a safe way to get around, Madeline Park has got their back. Park created an Instagram account called “Cafemaddycab” amid a wave of anti-Asian hate crimes across the US. The account has one goal: to pay the Uber or Lyft fee for any woman or elderly individual of Asian descent in New York in order to help them get to their destinations safely if they feel “unsafe taking the train in NYC".

Park, who had spent a majority of her decade in New York as a “broke student”, knew all too well what it was like to have to take the train or walk home rather than calling a cab because it was too expensive.

Now, she's using money from her own pocket, as well as from other donors, to make sure the cost isn't preventing anyone else from getting a ride. She decided to do so after fearing for her own safety just the other week.

“That's it. I took the train to work last week and every minute of the ride I was stressed," Park said in an Instagram post.“I was afraid that someone was going to walk up and start attacking me.”

One incident still on Park's mind was when “someone set a 29 year -old Asian woman's backpack on fire in the train around Ktown". Park said she was done taking the train while these hate crimes were going on and so should you.

Park started out with $ 2,000 of her own money, which she used to help reimburse(报销) any Lyft or Uber ride up to $ 40 per person. Within two days, donors collectively poured in over $ 100, 000 to help with her efforts. Park started accepting more donations and she expected other cities to start their own cab initiative(倡议).However, it's no small task.

“You have to have the TIME to commit to this and preferably a few people you trust to work with you, and a big heart for our community # StopAsianHate,” Park wrote in an Instagram post.