“Do you believe in life after death?” Jack's boss asked Jack.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Well, then, that makes everything just fine,” the boss went on. “About an hour after you left yesterday to go to your grandfather's funeral(葬礼), he dropped in to see you.”

    My name is Sam . I joined a club called“ passing help ” last month . Now let me tell you why I joined it.

    One evening this May, on my way home my old car was broken . It was 25 miles from my home . I wanted to get a ride, but there was no car . It was also hard to take a taxi . I decided to take a bus home .I went to a bus stop nearby .

    After a while , a bus came , but it did not go to my town .The bus driver was a young woman . She was kind and she told me which bus I should take . I waited there for about thirty minutes , but no bus came . At last a car came to me and a woman came out of the car .She was just the bus driver.

    “When I reached the bus station , I got to know that the bus to your town couldn't come ,so I returned here.I just can't leave you here ,” she said , “ Get in my car and I will take you back to your home .”

    “ It is a long way .”I said.

    “ Come on ,sir, ”she said ,“ Let's go.”

    On the way she told me a story . A few days ago, there wasn't gas(汽油）in her car . An old man drove her up to a gas station and then back to her car.

    When we got to my home , I wanted to give her some money to thank her , but she didn't accept it . “ I only want to help others and do something nice for somebody. Pass it along. ” She said.

    “Get up, get up, Jim. It's time to get up!” My mother said while she was pushing me. I opened my eyes and looked at the clock. “Oh dear! It's a quarter past eight already.” I'll be late for school again,” I thought. I jumped out of the bed, washed my face, and then hurried to the bus stop without breakfast. As soon as I   got on the bus, it started running. “I'm sure I can get to school in time,” I said to myself. Suddenly the bus stopped. The bus driver got off the bus, then got on the bus again and said, “I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen. There's something wrong with the bus. Please get off the bus and wait for another one.” “I couldn't wait. The school isn't far. I'd better run to school,” I thought, and then I began to run. But before I got to school, it began to rain hard.

    I reached the classroom but I was wet shivering with cold. The math teacher had already begun his lesson. It was Mr. Smith. He was very strict with his students and the students were a little afraid of him and so was I. I liked neither him nor his math lessons. I hesitated (犹豫) for a moment, and then I opened the door. “I'm very sorry, Mr. Smith. I'm late again,” I said with a red face.

    “It's you again, Jim,” Mr. Smith said angrily, “I've told you not to be late, but you...” he suddenly stopped and looked at my wet clothes. He turned to   the class and said, “I'm very sorry, boys and girls. ” With these words he quickly took off his own jacket and handed it to me. “Now, take off your wet coat and put on this one or you'll catch cold,” he said kindly.

    I went to my seat with Mr. Smith's jacket on. It was a bit larger for me but I felt very warm in it. I found, for the first time, math was so interesting and how well I could understand it!

根据材料内容选择最佳答案。

    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.

    Mary complained to her father about how hard she thought life was. She didn't know how to make it and wanted to give up.

    Mary's father took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and put each on a big fire. Soon the pots started to boil（沸腾）. In one he put carrots, in the second he put eggs, and in the last he put coffee powder. He watched them boil, without saying a word.

    Mary waited, wondering what he was doing. In about twenty minutes he turned off the fire. He took the carrots and eggs out and put them on different plates. Then he poured the coffee in a cup. He asked, "Mary, what do you see?"

    He asked Mary to touch the carrots. She found that they were soft.  He then asked her to take an egg and break it. She saw a hard-boiled egg after taking off the shell. Finally, he asked her to taste the coffee.  Its rich smell brought a smile to her face.

    Each of them had the same trouble, but each reacted differently. The carrot was strong and hard at first, but it became soft and weak. The egg was weak, too. But after going through the boiling water, its inside became hard. The coffee powder changed the water, and created something new. "Which one is you?" he asked Mary. "When trouble comes to you, are you a carrot, an egg, or the coffee powder?"

    A man once visited a temple that was still being built. He saw a sculptor making a sculpture(雕塑).As he watched the man work on the sculpture, he noticed that there was a similar sculpture lying nearby.

    He felt very strange and asked the sculptor, "Why are you making two same sculptures? Do you need two to put in different places?"

    "No, "the man said without looking up, "We need only one, but the first one became damaged before I could finish it, so I'm making a new one."

    The visitor picked up the damaged sculpture and examined it. But he couldn't find anything wrong with it.

    "Where is the damage?" he asked.

    "There is a scratch(擦痕)on the sculpture's nose." the sculptor said while continuing his work.

    The man then asked, "Where are you going to place the sculpture?"

    The sculptor replied that it would be placed on a 20﹣foot﹣high platform(平台)."If the sculpture is up that high, who is going to notice that there is a scratch on the nose?" the man asked.

    The sculptor stopped his work, looked up at the man and said, "I will know it".

    The sculptor chose to stick to a high standard of excellence in his work. Even if other people didn't notice it, it mattered to him that his work should be of the best quality. This is an attitude we should all work hard to keep.