Earl was looking at the wall outside the pub（酒馆）. The pub's name, The Old Swan, was on the wall. Next to the name was a wooden ship's wheel and in the middle of the wheel was the name of a ship, HMS Swan. The wheel was old, Earl could tell.

   The next morning, Earl asked to see Tony Thatcher. The Old Swan was Tony's pub. He took Earl to his office while Candy had a coffee outside by the river. Earl said he could give Tony a lot of money for the ship's wheel. He told Tony that Benjamin Cooper, his grandfather, went to America on the ship HMS Swan. But Tony said no at first. After all, the wheel was very old and it was part of the pub's past.

    "You can think of the past, Mr. Thatcher - can I call you Tony? - or you can think of today. And with the money, Tony, you can buy a good car. Maybe a new Jaguar? And, as I've told you, the wheel is part of my family's past too. So you could say it's going back home, in a way. So, what do you say?"

   A month later, Earl and Candy were smiling as they looked at the wall of their house in Houston, Texas. Earl thought to himself that, at last, he had a piece of his family's past. He was happy.

    In Portsmouth, Tony Thatcher was happy, too. He was putting his new Jaguar into his large garage（车库）. He was careful not to drive into any of the six ship's wheels in the garage. A friend of his made the wheels for him. They were just like the one that Earl bought. And there was another wheel on the outside wall of The Old Swan now. Old or new - Tony thought there was no way that a tourist could ever know which was which. Never in a hundred years.

    A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said, "I am blind, please help."

    There were only a few coins in the hat. A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

    Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy heard his footsteps and asked, "Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?" The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way."

    What he had written was, "Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it." Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing?

    Of course, both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first sign simply told people to help by putting some money in the hat. The second sign told people that they were able to enjoy the beauty of the day, but the boy could not enjoy it because he was blind.

    The first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind.

A

    Skin­diving is a new sport today. This sport takes you into a wonderful new world. It is like a visit to the moon. When you are under the water, it is easy for you to climb big rocks, because you are no longer heavy.

    Here, under the water, everything is blue and green. During the day, there is plenty of light. When fish swim nearby, you can catch them with your hands.

When you have tanks of oxygen on your back, you can stay in deep water for a long time. But you must be careful when you dive in deep water.

    To catch fish is one of the most interesting parts of this sport.

    What's more, there are more uses for skin­diving. You can clean ships without taking them out of water. You can get many things from the deep sea.

    Now you see that skin­diving is both useful and interesting.

    Popeye the Sailor first became a popular cartoon in the 1930s. The sailor in that cartoon ate lots of spinach (菠菜) to make him strong. People watched him, and they began to buy and eat a lot more spinach. Popeye helped sell 33 per cent more spinach than before! Spinach became a necessary part of many people's diets. Even some children who hated the taste began to eat the vegetable.

    Many people thought that the iron in spinach made Popeye strong, but this is not-true. Spinach does not have any more iron than any other green vegetables.

    People only thought spinach had a lot of iron because the people who studied the food made a mistake. In the 1890s, a group of people studied what was inside vegetables. This group said that spinach had ten times more iron than it did. The group wrote the number wrong, and everyone accepted it.

    Today, we know that the little iron there is in spinach cannot make a difference in how strong a person is. However, spinach does have something else which the body needs—folic acid.

    It is interesting to point out that folic acid can help make a person strong. Maybe it was really the folic acid that made Popeye strong all along.

    Robert was a greedy（贪婪的）man. One day, he lost 30 gold coins. He went to his friend Mike's house and told him how he lost his gold coins. Mike was kind and decided to help him find them.

    The next day, Mike went to Robert's house and told him he found his 30 gold coins.

    After counting the gold coins, Robert said, "I had 40 gold coins. Ten of them are missing. You must have taken them. And you should pay me back."

    "No, I didn't take them, "said Mike.

    Robert went to court（法庭）and told the judge（法官）what had taken place between him and his friend.

    "How many gold coins did you find?" the judge asked Mike.

    "Thirty, "answered Mike.

    "How many gold coins did you lose?" the judge asked Robert.

    "Forty, "answered Robert.

    "Then those coins are not yours, "said the judge, "for you lost 40, while your friend found 30."

    Then the judge told Mike to take the 30 gold coins home.

    "If anybody reports that they have found 40 gold coins, I will send them to you, "the judge told Robert.

    Then Robert said that he didn't tell the truth and that he lost 30 gold coins, but the judge did not listen to him.

    Always be honest; dishonesty never pays.

Do you know how to start a club at school? Here are some helpful ideas for you: