A businessman was once deep in debt（债务）and could see no way out. He sat on a park bench, head in hands, wondering if anything could save his company.

    Suddenly an old man appeared in front of him. “I can see that something is troubling you,” he said. After listening to the businessman's trouble, the old man said, “I believe I can help you.”

    He asked the man his name, wrote out a check（支票）and pushed it into his hand, saying, “Take this money. Meet me here exactly one year from today, and you can pay me back at that time.” Then he turned and disappeared.

    The businessman saw his hand a check for $500,000, signed by John D. Rockefeller. One of the richest man in the world.

    “It can solve my problem at once!” the businessman realized. But instead, he decided to put the check in his safe. Just knowing it was there that might give him the strength（力量）to work out a way to save his business, he thought.

    With renewed optimism（乐观精神）, he did better in his business. Within a few months, he was out of debt and making money once again.

    Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the check. At the agreed-upon（约定的）time, the old man appeared. But just as the businessman was about to hand back the check and share his successful story, a nurse came running up and caught the old man.

    “I'm so glad I caught him!” she cried. “I hope he hasn't been troubling you. He's always escaping from the hospital and telling people he's John D. Rockefeller.”

    And then she led the old man away by the arm. The businessman just stood there,________. Suddenly, he realized that it wasn't the money, real or imagined, that had turned his life around. It was his newfound self-confidence（自信心）that gave him the strength to achieve anything he went after.

    One day a woman wrote to a doctor to invite him to have a dinner with her family in the restaurant. The doctor wrote and answered, but he wrote too badly and the woman couldn't read it. "What can I do?" she asked her husband, "I don't know whether he is going to come or not. I don't want to call and say that I don't know what he writes. "

    Her husband thought for a few minutes and he had an idea. "Take it to the chemist, "he said." He will read it for us. "

    "Thank you, "the woman said, "That's a good idea." She went to the chemist's shop and gave the doctor's note to him. The chemist looked at it for a long time.

    "Wait a moment, please." he said, then he went to the back of the shop. After a few minutes he came back, carrying a large bottle to the woman. "Take one spoonful（一匙）every day." he told the woman.

    My friend's grandfather came to America from a farm in Thailand. After arriving in New York, he went into a cafeteria in Manhattan to get something to eat. He sat down at an empty table and waited for someone to take his order. Of course nobody did. Finally, a woman with a big plate full of food came up to him. She sat down opposite him and told him how a cafeteria worked.

    "Start out at that end," she said, "Just go along the line and choose what you want. At the other end they'll tell you how much you have to pay."

    "I soon learned that's how everything works in America," the grandfather told my friend later," Life's a cafeteria here. You can get anything you want as long as you want to pay the price. You can even get success but you'll never get it if you wait for someone to bring it to you. You have to get up and get it yourself."

    As the fifth of seven children, I went to the same public school as my three elder sisters and brother. Every year, each child from the third grade took part in an old school tradition—the plant sale held in early May, just before Mother's Day.

    That year I was old enough to take part in it. I wanted to surprise my mother, but I didn't have any money. I told my elder sister about it and she gave me some money. When I arrived at the plant sale, I carefully chose my favorite. I watched each plant seriously to make sure that I could find the best geranium(天竺葵). After school, with the help of my sister I bid it on the neighbor's porch(门廊). On Mother's Day, I remember how bright my mother's eyes were and how elated she was at my gift.

    The year I was fifteen, my younger sister reached the third, grade. She told me that, she wanted to surprise our mother. Like my elder sister did for me, I gave her some money. And she bought the same gift and we hid it in the same place. When she gave the gift to my mother, I watched them full of pride and happiness. My mother noticed me watching and gave me a soft and secret smile. With a shock at my heart, I smiled back.

    I wonder how my mother could pretend (假装) to be surprised at the same sixth child, but as I watched her eyes, I knew she was not pretending.