A beautiful and very successful actress played the lead role in a new musical show. Her home was in the countryside, but she did not want to go back there every night, so she bought an expensive house in the centre of the city, she got some beautiful furniture(家具) and had a man to paint the rooms in new colours.

    It was very difficult to get tickets for her show, because everybody wanted to see it. So she decided to give the painter two of the best seats. She hoped that this would make him work better for her. He took the tickets without saying anything, and she heard no more about them until the end of the month, when she got the painter's bill (帐单). At the bottom of it were these words: “Four hours watching Miss Hall sing and dance : 3 pounds,” with this note: “ After 5 p.m. I get 15 shillings (先令) an hour instead of 10 shillings.”

    I think the most terrible thing in life for my little brother is getting up in the morning. He is almost sick when my mother calls, "Herbert! It's seven o'clock! Get up!"

    Herbert answers, "I'm coming!" and goes right back to sleep. I'm not at all like my brother. I don't like to go to bed at night but I don't mind getting up in the morning.

    I usually wake up before my mother calls me. I jump out of bed and go into the bathroom to take a shower. I great dressed, brush my teeth, comb my hair, and get ready to go down stairs for breakfast as soon as my mother calls.

    But not Herbert. He just sleeps. A military band (军乐队) in our bedroom could not wake him up. I call him and say, "Get up!" Mum will be up here to pull you out of bed if you don't get up quickly.

    But he just sleeps. After calling a few more times my mother has to come upstairs and pull Herbert out of bed. It's that way every day with my little brother. Perhaps some day he'll learn to get up on time, but I really don't think so.

    It was summertime. Donna walked into the classroom." Good afternoon, everybody!" That was a joke Donna told every day. Usually the class started with only two or three students in the classroom, and then the other students came as the minutes went by.

    Donna knew that the students didn't like studying English. The head teacher had told her the reason. The students thought English was confusing.

    Donna waited until all the students were sitting in their seats. She smiled and said," Okay, well. Let's get started. Please turn to Page 36. Today we're studying participles as adjectives（分词作形容词）. Students often feel confused when they learn about the present and past participles, so we need to practice a lot. Today, we're just going to practice using present participles as adjectives." Donna looked at all the blank faces around the classroom. Then she wrote two sentences on the blackboard.

    "The present participle tells us what kind of emotion the subject（主语）is causing. For example, when we say 'grammar is boring', we mean that the subject—grammar — causes an emotion of boredom. If we say, 'The movie is interesting', we are saying that the movie causes an emotion of interest. Any questions so far? Is anyone confused?"

    The classroom was quiet. Donna knew it would take some time for everyone to understand what she was talking about. After a while, Donna got a little excited because she saw looks of understanding on some of the students' faces.

    Today, after 10 days of medical treatment, for the first time, I went out alone to meet a motherly lady who I had met during my stay in a program. She had been unwell recently and I lived alone. Her sons live in foreign countries.

    After I called her and told about my plan to visit her, she started becoming excited and happily planning food at once. Nowadays, she has a lady cook coming by to help her but she does part of the work herself with her bandaged leg.

    I reached her home alone after being guided a couple of times by her before. I carried little things (snacks, books etc.) for her. She had been waiting for some time when I arrived. We talked about different things from health to her life and mine, from past to future, from food to travel etc. During the discussion, her care for me became clear when she made warm suggestions or supported me.

    During the last few months, she had struggled with health and housework. She had got over those difficulties and here she was telling me how all of us must face some problems. She had seen a few people facing worse problems in the hospital and mentioned about their cases and was grateful for her present condition which was manageable.

    She wanted to gift me something—she kept thinking of a dress, watch, footwear etc. whatever was new and great in her home. I kept refusing but finally took the footwear out of politeness.

    She loved the snacks I had brought and wanted to eat them with her tea. I was quite happy to see the child like interest.

    While I was spending time with my motherly friend, the following thought kept coming back to me-probably this is why I have lived through the 10 days in this city. The time I spent with her seemed so much needed. I felt the deep peace it could bring to me and that brought such a big joy!

    Clark and Dale were staying in the same room in hospital. Clark was so sick that he could not even move his body. He had to spend all his time lying on his back. Dale could sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon. His bed was next to the room's only window.

    Over time, Clark and Dale became good friends. Every afternoon, Dale would look out of the room's only window, describing the scenery outside for his friend. He told Clark about the flowers in a park outside the window, the people walking by, the green trees beside the roads—anything that might interest a man.

    On morning, when a nurse came only to check the two men, she found that Dale had died in his sleep. As soon as the room seemed tidy again. Clark asked if he could move to the bed next to the window so that he could look out of the window himself. The nurse agreed. Slowly, he could take his first look at the world outside. To his surprise, he could see nothing but a blank wall of another building.

    The nurse explained that Dale had been blind. He had never seen anything outside the window at all—but he described beautiful scenes to help his friend better.