Mr. King goes to a dinner party. He is wearing old clothes. He comes into the room. But people in the room don't look at him. They don't ask him to sit at the table. Mr. King goes home and puts on his good clothes. He goes back to the party. Everyone in the room stands up and smiles at him. They give him very good food to eat. Mr. King takes off his clothes, and puts them in the food and says, “Eat, clothes!” The other people ask, “What are you doing?” He answers, “I'm asking my coat to eat food. I am wearing my old clothes. You don't look at me. You don't ask me to sit down. Now I'm in these clothes. And you give me very good food. Now I see, you give the food to my clothes, not to me!”

    It was a sunny winter day. I had gone down the tower when a blind man came toward me. He kept close to the wall, touching it lightly with his arm. I stood still and looked at him walking toward the tower.

    "What does a blind man want to climb up the tower for?" I wondered (疑惑). "Not the view(景色) certainly, perhaps he wants to jump. "Thinking of some terrible reasons, I thought I should 1 him.

    He went up slowly and 2 from time to time. I followed him a few steps behind. When he got to the first corner of the bell tower, I came close to him. "Excuse me, "I said as politely as I could, "but I wonder 3 you came up."

    He smiled, "Perhaps climbing up the tower. You have noticed — and yet, not being blind, perhaps you won't — how the sun shines into the tower 4 the windows here and there, so that one can 5the cool steps suddenly become quite warm, even in winter. But behind the wall there is shade(阴影). There is no place so good as this for feeling the difference between light and darkness. Though I'm blind, I also want to feel the 6 brought by the sunlight. In fact, it isn't my first time to be here." He said and seemed as    7 as a child.

    I had never thought that even a blind man could have his way to 8 the beautiful life. But we often paid no attention to its value because we never 9 it.

    We went down the 10 together and I left him. From then on, I began to treasure what life has given me.

    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 pock et 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 recognized(听出) 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; I can not see it."

    Of course both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first sign simply sign the boy was blind. The second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective (有效的)?

    One day an old man is on his way home. Just then a stranger(陌生人)stops him and asks, "Excuse me, how long will it take to walk to the next village?"

    The old man looks at the stranger but he doesn't answer. The stranger says to himself. "This old man can't hear me clearly. I will ask him again." Then he asks the old man loudly. The old man thinks for a while, but he still doesn't answer.

    At this time, this stranger is very angry and shouts at the old man." How long will it take me to walk to the next village? ''But the old man doesn't give him any answer. So the stranger begins to walk quickly to the village.

    The old man calls after him, "My friend, it will take you only fifteen minutes." The stranger says, "Well, why do you tell me now?" The old man says, "How could I tell you just now? I don't know how fast you can walk."

    Once upon a time, a hippo (河马) lived in a river next to a big tree.

One day, a bird came and nested (筑巢) in the tree. The songs of the bird filled the hippo with so much envy (羡慕) that he couldn't think of anything else. Every day he would think why he wasn't born to be a bird even though the bird told him many times he was so lucky to be so big and such a good swimmer.

    Finally, the hippo made up his mind that he would come out of the river, climb the tree, and start singing. However, when he tried to climb the tree, it was very clear that the hippo didn't have wings, nor claws to climb with.

    Realizing that he would never climb up the tree, he angrily hit the tree until it came down to the ground. Then he stepped onto the leaves of the fallen tree, and began singing.

    Unfortunately, hippo can't sing, either. All that came from his mouth were terrible noise, and when the other animals heard this, they all came around to make fun of the hippo.

    He was so ashamed (羞愧的) by this. He also felt bad about having knocked the tree over. He used all his strength to raise the tree back up again, and look after it until it completely recovered. (康复)