Once a great boxer(拳击手), Tom Brown, went to a restaurant for dinner. He put his bag near the door, but he was afraid that someone would take it away. So he got out a pen and a piece of paper and wrote on it, “The great boxer, Tom Brown, left his bag here and he will be back in a few minutes.”

    He put the paper on his bag and went to have his dinner. When he came back, his bag wasn't there. But he found a piece of paper on the ground. It said, “A great runner took away your bag, and will not be back.”

    Jack thought himself a basketball fan. He watched quite a lot of American NBA basketball games. Not only did he watch them, he spent much of his free time playing on the court too. Then came the final year of his middle school. All of his regular teammates stopped showing up on the court because they were simply too busy preparing for the high school entrance exam to play. He was, of course, under much stress himself, like everyone else. A good exam result meant a good high school; a mediocre(平庸的) score meant a mediocre school. Much was at stake.

    However, he loved basketball so much that he still found time to play, this time with a group of guys who were said to have skipped classes(逃课) before.

    Some of his teachers started worrying about him. They asked his mother to go to school to let her know that Jack was hanging out with problem kids. When his mother returned home that day, she wanted to talk to Jack. Knowing the purpose of her visit to the school, Jack though his mother would punish him for befriending those bad guys. To his surprise, his mother was not angry with him at all. She wanted to hear her son's side of story. So Jack told his mother about what he knew of Simon and Peter. Simon's parents were badly ill; Peter's father had lost his job. They both seemed to Jack to be normal kids. Jack's mother thought for a moment, and then went on to say that she was OK with her son playing with them and that she and her son should think of ways to help these kids. Soon Jack's mother introduced some part -time jobs to Simon and Peter, which they accepted. She believed in her son and cared about those who were less lucky.

    Jack's basketball friends and he have left for different places, but they still keep in touch. He knows Peter is now a manager of a local bank. Simon is currently a freshman at a university. Sadly, it is impossible to get together to play basketball again, but whenever they get on the phone, they talk about all the time.

    Thirty years ago I worked in a company. My job was to sell the cars. I was young and strong and I had been to most parts of the world and I spent one fifth of my time in the trains or planes. I liked such a life and sometimes I called myself "traveler".

    But one day I got into trouble. It was a cold morning. It blew heavily and the ground was covered with thick snow outside. I was still in bed though it was nine. I finished a long journey the day before and decided to have a good rest. Suddenly the telephone rang and my manager told me to fly to New York to take part in an important meeting. I had to get up and after a quick breakfast I hurried to the airport. The taxi went slowly and I missed the first flight. I had to take the next one. It meant I would wait for nearly five hours in the waiting-room. But five hours later a passenger said the information showed there was a bomb(炸弹) in our plane and the policemen were looking for it. And another five hours passed and most passengers lost their patience before we were allowed to get on the plane. At the entrance each passenger and their baggage(行李) had to be examined. A young man who seemed a soldier shouted at the policemen at the entrance, "If I had a gun in my baggage, I would shoot you two hours ago!"

Once there were four beggars (乞丐). One day, they met at an old temple at night. They were very upset because none of them had much to eat.

"I only got this piece of meat today." the first said. "I almost got nothing," the second said, "I just picked up a potato outside the vegetable store during the day." The third said that all he had was a small bottle of salt. The fourth beggar had not done much better, "I only got some old beans, but they aren't very nice!" 

As they sat around the fire, the beggar with only a bottle of salt had a great idea "Let's put all our things together and boil them. In this way, we can make a tasty dish and share it." They all agreed. However, the first beggar thought, "I don't want to share. I'll just pretend to throw my meat into the pot. They'll never know and I'll eat my meat alone later." So he pretended to put the meat into the pot. And at the same time the other beggars had similar ideas to him. At that time, the temple was too dark for the beggars to see what the others were doing.

Finally, one of them suggested that the dish should be ready and, in turn, each of them helped himself to it. They drank the hot water in silence, learning that selfishness (自私) doesn't taste all that good.