In 1880, fourteen-year-old Matthew Henson loved to hear sailors tell tales of their exciting lives at sea. The travel, the adventure, the danger, and the steady pay were all attracting young Henson. One day, he found a job as a cabin boy on a beautiful ship called the Katie Hinds. For the next five years, Henson sailed around the world. With the help of the ship's captain and other members of the crew, Henson learned mathematics, navigation, history, geography, and many other subjects. By the time he left the Katie Hinds in 1885, Henson was well educated and had become an excellent seaman.

    Unable to find work anywhere else, Henson took a job in a hat shop in Washington, D.C. One day in 1887, a man came in to buy a hat. The man, Robert Peary, asked the owner if he knew anyone with experience at sea. Peary would soon travel to South America for the U.S. government. He needed experienced men to accompany him. The shop owner knew about his young employee's skills and experience on ocean journeys, so he introduced Peary to Henson.

    Using his map-reading and sailing skills, Henson proved himself to be a worthy and smart seaman. Peary soon made Henson his assistant（助理）, and they became close friends. One day Peary told Henson about his real dream: to be the first man to stand on “the top of the world” at the North Pole. He asked Henson to help him make his dream come true. Over the next five years, the two explorers made two trips together to the Arctic. However, they were not able to reach the pole either time. The cold, wind, and ice were worse than either of them had ever imagined.

    In 1908, Peary and Henson were ready to make their final attempt at reaching the North Pole. Both men were over forty years old. The years of hardship in the arctic cold had made them suffer a lot. This would be their last chance. With four Inuit（因纽特）guides, they made a mad rush straight across the ice toward the pole. Peary's feet were injured and he had to be pulled on a dogsled. In April 1909, Henson's instruments showed they were standing at the North Pole. Together Henson and Peary planted the American flag in the snow.

    In later years, Robert Peary and Henson were greatly honored for their achievements. Today, the two friends and fellow explorers lie in heroes' graves not far apart in the Arlington National Cemetery.

    Marjorie grew up with a sense of worthlessness. Again and again her father said she would never accomplish anything in life. He told her she was a loser and that anything she did was sure to end in failure. With these words constantly ringing in her ears she grew up looking for someone who would love her and see her as a person of worth. This led her into relationships that disappointed her, ending in pain yet, which was another proof that she was worthless and unlovable. Where does our sense of self-worth come from?

    It is true that the foundation for a person's self-worth is laid in the home. Words that we hear in our home can build or tear down our worth. Encouraging words are words of life to us while words of criticism are words of death. Other people like teachers, friends and employers add to the collection of life-giving death words in a person's heart. Over time a person begins to see themselves in the light of these words. In this situation can one develop a sense of worth?

    Feeling worthless is possibly the most obvious symptom of low self-esteem（自尊心）. But it's easy to overcome. However tough your childhood is, you can still choose to enrich the world every day simply by the way you interact with others and make caring decisions. Whether we contribute anything or not is a choice. Feeling worthless means that you're not doing as well in the areas that matter to you and therefore you need to try to increase your self-esteem. To feel worthwhile, you'll have to really work at it and never give up on yourself.

    All human beings are capable of adding value to society, including you. Thus there are no excuses for saying things like “I'm worthless, stupid, useless” because you have the choice not to be any of these things.

    In the 1880s, Mark Twain managed his own publishing company. He also became interested in various investments（投资）, especially a kind of typesetting machine. He lost almost $200,000 in investments in the machine between 1881 and 1894. Also, his publishing company declared bankruptcy（破产）in April 1894. Thus, in January 1895, Mark Twain found himself publicly shamed by his inability to pay his debts.

    Mark Twain finally recovered from his financial difficulties, through his continued writing and a successful lecture tour in 1895 and 1896. During this much-publicized tour, Twain lectured in such places as India, South Africa and Australia. By the time he returned, he had become an international hero. Twain enjoyed this attention, and his habits of smoking cigars or a pipe and wearing unusual white suits contributed to his showy image. He also made use of his position as a public figure to criticize the US foreign policy.

    Although he was recovering from his financial problems by 1898, Mark Twain had begun to experience tragedy（悲剧）in his personal life. Suzy, his oldest daughter, died of meningitis （脑膜炎）in 1896, while her parents and sister Clara were abroad. In 1903, Mark Twain sold the beloved house in Hartford, which had become too closely associated with Suzy's death. His wife, Olivia, who had developed a heart condition, died on June 5, 1904. His youngest daughter, Jean, died on Dec.24, 1909.

    Dogs were living as companions to the early settlers of North America over 10,000 years ago. The oldest domestic dogs in the Americas were thought to be around 9500 years old. Angela Perri of Durham University, UK, and her colleagues have carried out fresh radiocarbon dating on the two dog skeletons that gave this date, discovered in the prehistoric Koster site in Illinois, and found they were even older: around 10,100 years old.

    A third dog from another Illinois site called Stilwell II was older still, at 10,190 years old. That makes it the oldest known domesticated dog in the Americas. The team concluded that all three dogs were domesticated as they skeletons were complete and unskinned, and so hadn't been butchered for food. They had also been carefully buried, evidence they were valued by their owners. The Stilwell II dog, which probably resembled a small English settler, was under what seemed to be the floor of a living area. It is unclear why it took so long for tame dogs to arrive in the Americas, given that they were domesticated at least 14,000 years ago in Eurasia. By this time, people were already moving into North America from Siberia; there is evidence some reached Chile 18,500 years ago. Geneticists have found signs of at least three waves of migration over the following millennia. There is no evidence that domestic dogs accompanied them. “We don't know if dogs were part of the first waves of immigration to the Americas" says Luc Janssens of Ghent University in Belgium. "It could be so, but no archaeological bones have yet been found." It is "overwhelmingly probable" that some of the early settlers did bring dogs to the Americas, but they may not have had "the time or the spiritual compulsion to bury them", says Pat Shipman of Pennsylvania State University.

An Invisible Smile

    Mr Dawson was an old man who always complained a lot, and everyone in town knew it. Kids ever went into his yard to pick a delicious apple. Old Dawson, they said, would come after them with his gun.

    One Friday, 12-year-old Janet was going to stay all night with her friend Amy. They had to walk by Dawson's house on the way to Amy's house, but as they got close, Janet saw him sitting on his front porch and suggested they cross over to the other side of the street. Like most of the children，Janet was scared of the old man.

    Amy said not to worry, Mr Dawson wouldn't hurt anyone. Still, Janet was growing more nervous with each step closer to the old man's house. When they got close enough, Dawson looked up with his usual frown, but when he saw it was Amy, a broad smile changed his entire face as he said, “Hello, Miss Amy. I see you've got a little friend with you today. ”

    Amy smiled back and told him Janet was staying overnight and they were going to listen to music and play games. Mr Dawson said that sounded fun and offered them each a fresh picked apple off his tree. They gladly accepted. Mr Dawson had the best apples in the whole town.

    When they left, Janet asked Amy, “Everyone says he's the meanest man in town. How come he was so nice to us?”

    Amy explained that when she first started walking past his house he wasn't very friendly and she was afraid of him, but she pretended he was wearing an invisible smile and so she always smiled back at him. It took a while, but one day he half-smiled back at her.

    After some more time, he started smiling real smiles and then started talking to her. Just a “hello” at first, then more. She said he always offered her an apple and was always very kind.

    “An invisible smile? ”questioned Janet.

    “Yes,”answered Amy, “my grandma told me that if I pretended I wasn't afraid and pretended he was smiling an invisible smile at me and I smiled back at him, sooner or later he would really smile. Grandma says smiles are contagious.”

If we remember what Amy's grandma said — everyone wears an invisible smile, we too will find that we're always on the go trying to accomplish so much, aren't we? It's so easy to get caught up in everyday life that we forget how simple it can be to bring cheer to ourselves and others. Giving a smile away takes so little effort and time. Let's make sure that we're not the ones that others have to pretend to be wearing an invisible smile.

    In today's society, almost half of all marriages in America end in divorce, which means many children have divorced parents, and 1 am by no means a rare case. There are plenty of other people understanding the difficulty of having separated parents and living in two households. Despite this, people who haven't personally experienced divorce really have no idea what it's like.

    My parents have handled divorce and joint custody(监护) well, at least better than expected. Occasionally my parents put up the curtain to block my brother and I from the reality and I will get a glimpse of the not-so-bright-and-sunny reality, the fact that my parents simply don't like each other, let along get along. They try to make sure my brother and I don't overhear the argument and do their best to keep my brother and I out of their issues.

    Last Mother's Day I woke up at my dad's house with a text message from my mom saying, "Call me when u can." I rolled out of bed and dialed her number. On the other end of the phone I could hear my mom's trembling voice. "Your dad isn't letting me have you until 7 tonight." I knew Mother's Day was important to her and me. I began to get angry with my dad, but I told myself that getting mad and fueling my mom's anger towards my dad wouldn't help. Later my father told me that he had planned to spend time with my grandma and step-mom for Mother's Day, which I understood and accepted but I also understood why my mom wouldn't accept it.

    While having divorced parents is difficult, I have learned a lot about how to deal with conflict from an early age and I've been blessed with an extremely large family, which is an amazing network of support.