Whenyou enter my home for the first time, you will always be impressed with a smalland white envelope（信封）. No name, no address. Ithas hung on our Christmas tree for about 10 years.

    Itall began because my husband Mike hated Christmas. He didn't hate the truemeaning of Christmas, but the commercial（商业的） way ofit, spending too much on the usual Christmas gifts, such as rushing into astore to buy a tie for Uncle Harry.

    Knowinghe felt this way, I decided not to buy the usual gifts, such as shirts andsweaters. I reached for something special for Mike. The idea came in an unusualway.

    Ourson Kevin, 12, was wrestling（摔跤） at the school. BeforeChristmas there was a match against a team helped by a city church, mostly poorkids. As the match began, I was surprised to see the other team wrestling onlywearing the old clothes because they couldn't afford the wrestling uniforms, whileour boys in their blue and gold uniforms. Of course, we ended up with beatingthem.

    Mike,seated beside me, shook his head sadly," I wish just one of them couldhave won. In fact, they could if they had worn the uniforms. They have talentfor wrestling, but losing like thiscould take the heart right out of them."

    Mikeloved kids-all kids and he knew them, having trained kids football andbaseball. At that time, I thought of the idea for the gift.

    Thatafternoon, I went to a store and bought some wrestling uniforms and sent themto the city church for the kids without leaving my name.

    OnChristmas Eve, I put the envelope on the tree, the note inside telling Mikewhat I had done and telling him that this was his gift from me. His smile was thegreatest thing about Christmas that year and the next years.

    Yousee, we lost Mike now. But every Christmas Eve I would put an envelope on thetree, and in the morning, three more joined it. Each of our children hadsecretly put an envelope on the tree for their dad.

    Mike'sspirit, like the Christmas spirit, will always be with us.

    One day a ragged(衣衫槛楼的)beggar(乞丐)was creeping along from house to house. He carried an old wallet in one hand and at every house he asked for a little money to buy something to eat. As he was complaining at his misfortune(不幸), he kept wondering why people who had so much money were never satisfied and always wanted more.

    He thought that if he only had enough money to buy food and clothing, he would be very happy and wouldn't want anything more.

    At that moment, Fortune came down the street. She saw the beggar and stopped. She said to him:" I want to help you. Hold out your wallet and I will pour this gold into it, but only on this condition. All that falls into your wallet will be pure gold, but all that hits the ground will turn into dust. Do you understand?"

    "Oh, yes I understand." said the beggar.

    "Your wallet is old. Don't put too much in it," said Fortune.

    The beggar opened his wallet and a stream of pure gold flowed into it. His wallet grew heavy.

    "You are the richest man in the world now," said Fortune. "I think you should stop! Your wallet is going to break!" However, the beggar said he wanted one more handful. Fortune added one more handful and the wallet split. All the gold fell to the ground and turned to dust. The beggar had nothing but his empty wallet. He was as poor as he had been before.

Good Neighbours

    Mr. and Mrs. March lived together with their four daughters. Amy was very shy. Beth loved being at home. Meg looked very pretty. Jo was tall and thin and she was a tomboy. Their home was always busy and full of noise and people. Next to them lived old Mr. Laurence and his grandson, Laurie. They lived in a very large and comfortable house. But it was a house without life.

    One day, Joe saw Laurie standing at an upstairs window in his house and looking down at their garden. Jo's sisters were playing in the snow there. They were throwing snowballs and having a lot of fun. But Laurie's face was very sad.

    "Poor boy!" Jo thought. "He's all alone. He needs some friends." She couldn't stop thinking about him. She wanted to go and see him, but how could she go to the house without an invitation?

    Then one snowy afternoon, she saw Laurie's grandpa go out. This gave her an idea. She took a broom from the kitchen.

    "What are you going to do, Jo?" asked her sister Meg.

    "To clear the garden path." Answered Jo.

    When Laurie saw Jo from the window, a big smile changed his pale, sad face.

    Jo laughed and shouted, "How are you? Are you ill?"

    Laurie opened the window and said," I'm better now, thank you. I had a bad cold and had to stay inside for a week".

    "I'm sorry," said Jo. "Are you bored?"

    "Yes, very." he replied.

    "Don't your friends come to visit you?"

    "No. But I don't want to see anybody. Boys are noisy and they give me a headache."

    "Girls are quiet."

    "I don't know any girls."

    "You know us."

    "That's true! Can you come and visit me?" cried Laurie.

    "I'm not quiet, but I'd like to come," replied Jo. "I must ask Mother first." She ran back into her house.

    A few minutes later, she returned and rang the bell on the door of Laurie's house. A servant took her upstairs.

    "Here I am!" she said brightly. "Mother sends her love and my sisters gave me this blancmange (牛奶冻) for you."

    "That looks delicious," Laurie said. He was very happy to see Jo.

Jo looked around. There were lots of books on the shelves.

    "A nice room!" she said. "I can read to you if you like."

    "No, let's talk," replied Laurie.

    "All right," said Jo, "I can talk for hours. My sisters say I never know when to stop."

    "You have three sisters—Amy, Beth and Meg." Laurie continued.

    "How do you know this?" Jo was surprised.

    "You call each other's names when you are in the garden. Sometimes I can see you all around the table with your mother. She has a very kind face. I like looking at her. I haven't got a mother."

     Jo felt sad when she heard this.

    "Why don't you come and visit us?" she said, "It isn't good for you to stay in this house all the time."

    "Thank you. I'd like to come very much." Said Laurie.

    "We know all our neighbours except you." Jo said, "I'm glad we're friends now."

    She told him about all the interesting things in her life. She said," Besides(除了……之外) plays, I also love books." Laurie loved books too, and offered to show her the library in the house. The library was a wonderful room. Jo loved it.

    "Wow!" she said, "All those books!"

    Laurie said, "A person needs more than books."

    (Adapted from Little Women)

    Tom was a fat boy when he was ten. He liked watching TV very much. He watched TV at least 5 hours every day. Wherever(无论哪里) he went, he would be late.

    One day, he found a pair of special glasses in his post-box(邮箱). He also found a message saying, "With these you can see time."

    The boy decided to have a try. He put the glasses on, looked at his brother, a tall and thin boy, and saw a big box of flowers on top of his head. And it wasn't just his brother. When he looked at his parents, he also saw the flowers. The three boxes were very large and the flowers were very beautiful. Then, he looked at himself from the mirror. He saw the flowers, too. But his flowers went to the mouth of the television. Its mouth was big. His flowers became fewer and fewer.

    At last, he learned that watching TV was a waste of time. He could learn nothing from it. He decided he would never again let the television eat his time.

    Not many years ago, a wealthy and rather strange old man named Johnson lived alone in a village in the south of England. He had made a lot of money in trading with foreign countries. When he was 75, he gave ￡12,000 to the village school to buy land and equipment for a children's playground.

As a result of his kindness, many people came to visit him. Among them was a newspaperman. During their talk, Johnson remarked that he was 75 and expected to live to be 100, and the newspaperman asked him how he managed to be healthy at 75. Johnson had a sense of humor. He liked whisky and drank some each day. "I have an injection (注射) in my neck each evening", he told the newspaperman, thinking of his evening glass of whisky.

The newspaperman did not understand what Johnson meant. In his newspaper he reported that Johnson was 75 and had a daily injection in his neck. Within a week, Johnson received thousands of letters from all over Britain, asking him for the secret of his daily injection.