My sister and I grew up in a little village in England. Our father was a struggling lawyer, but I always knew he was special. He never criticized us, but used praise to bring out our best. He'd say, "If you pour water on flowers, they flourish (茂盛). If you don't give them water, they die." I remember as a child I said something unkind about somebody, and my father said, "Any time you say something unpleasant about somebody else, it's a reflection of you." He explained that if I looked for the best in people, I would get the best in return. From then on I've always tried to follow the principle in my life and later in running my company.

    Dad's also always been very understanding. At 15, I started a magazine. It was taking up a great deal of my time, and the headmaster of my school gave me a choice: stay in school or leave to work on my magazine.

    I decided to leave, and Dad tried to sway me from my decision at first, as any good father would. When he realized I had made up my mind, he said, "Richard, when I was 23, my dad persuaded me to go into law. And I've always regretted it. I wanted to be a biologist, but I didn't pursue my dream. You know what you want. Go fulfill it."

    As it turned out, my little publication went on to become Student, a national magazine for young people in the U.K. My wife and I have two children, and I'd like to think we are bringing them up in the same way Dad raised me.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

Do you dream?

    Have you ever visited some strange places in your dreams? In fact people have wondered about these strange places for long.{#blank#}1{#/blank#} However, they have been valued as necessary to a person's health and happiness.

    Historically, people thought dreams contained messages from God. It was only in the twentieth century that people started to study dreams scientifically, believing that they tell about a person's character.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} He believed that dreams allow a person to express fantasies or fears, which would be socially unacceptable in real life.

    The second theory to become popular was Carl Jung's compensation theory. Jung, a former student of Freud, said that the purpose of a dream is not to hide something, but rather to communicate it to the dreamer.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} Thus, people who think too highly of themselves may dream about falling; those who think too little of themselves dream of being heroes.

    Using more recent research, William Domhoff from the University of California found that dreaming is a mental skill that needs time to develop in humans.{#blank#}4{#/blank#} Until they reach the age of five, they can not express very well what their dreams are about. Once people become adults, there is little or no change in their dreams. The dreams of men and women differ. For instance, the characters that appear in the dreams of men are often other men, and often involve physical aggression.

    The meaning of dreams continues to be difficult to understand. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} If you dream that a loved one is going to die, do not panic. The dream may have meaning, but it does not mean that your loved one is going to die.

A. Dreams make up for what is lacking in waking life.

B. But anyway, people should not take their dreams as reality.

C. It gives scientists chances to better understand human mind.

D. They have been considered as meaningless nighttime journeys.

E. First, there was Sigmund Freud's theory.

F. They think their mind is trying to tell them something.

G. Children do not dream as much as adults.

    Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954 to a Mexican American family. As the only girl in a family of seven children, she often felt like she had "seven fathers ", because her six brothers, as well as her father, tried to control her. Feeling shy and unimportant, she hid herself into books. Despite her love of reading, she did not do well in elementary school because she was too shy to participate.

    In high school, with the encouragement of one particular teacher, Cisneros improved her grades and worked for the school literary magazine. Her father encouraged her to go to college because he thought it would be a good way for her to find a husband. Cisneros did attend college, but instead of searching for a husband, she found a teacher who helped her join the famous graduate writing program at the University of Iowa. At the University's Writers' Workshop, however, she felt lonely—a Mexican American from a poor neighborhood among students from wealthy families. The feeling of being so different helped Cisneros find her "creative voice".

    "It was not until this moment when I considered myself truly different that my writing acquired a voice. I knew I was a Mexican woman, but I didn't think it had anything to do with why I felt so much imbalanced in my life, but it had everything to do with it! That's when I decided I would write about something my classmates couldn't write about."

    Cisneros published her first work, The House on Mango Street , when she was twenty-nine. The book tells about a young Mexican American girl growing up in a Spanish-speaking area in Chicago, much like the neighborhoods in which Cisneros lived as a child. The book won an award in 1985 and has been used in classes from high school through graduate school level. Since then, Cisneros has published several books of poetry, a children's book, and a shortstory collection.

    Tom arrived at the bus station quite early for the London bus. The bus for London would not leave until five to twelve. He saw a lot of people waiting in the station. Some were standing in lines, others were walking about. There was a group of school-girls. Their teacher was trying to keep them in order. Tom looked around but there was nowhere for him to sit.

    He walked into the station cafe. He looked up at the clock there. It was only twenty to twelve. He found a seat and sat down, facing a large mirror(镜子) on the wall. Just then, John, one of Tom's friends, came in and sat with Tom.

    "What time is your bus?" asked John.

    "Oh, there is plenty of time yet," answered Tom.

    "Oh, I'll get you some more tea then," said John.

    They talked while drinking. Then Tom looked at the clock again.

    "Good heavens! It's going backward!" he cried. "A few minutes ago it was twenty to twelve and now it's half past eleven."

    "You are looking at the clock in the mirror," said John.

    Tom wanted to kick himself for being so foolish. The next bus was not to leave for another hour. He has never liked mirror since then.

A kind of blue dye (颜料) called folium had been widely used to paint pictures on the pages of manuscripts (手稿) created in the Middle Ages. But long ago, this watercolor fell out of use.

"Manuscripts are an important part of the cultural works of art in the Middle Ages," said scientist Maria in an email to CNN. "Color is a basic feature of these manuscripts. To let ancient manuscripts. keep a good condition for future generations, we sometimes need to repaint their inside pictures through the ancient dye — like folium — that was once used in these manuscripts. But everyone who knew how to prepare folium had died long ago. So 'I led a team to study this dye."

Her team turned to books from the 1400s and found one that described the plant that was its source. It is a tiny plant with silvery-green leaves. Days later, the scientists reached a village in south Portugal, where nobody knew this little plant. However, after carefully going through a plenty of different plants growing there, the scientists finally raked out the plant they wanted and brought some back to their laboratory.

Back in the lab, the scientists produced the dye with the help of an ancient text on colors. The text has clearly described the ways to make it. "It's cool to have done that work of looking in the historical records and traveling back in time," says Casadio, who was not part of this study. It recreates an ancient process. By making the dye, the scientists could study its chemistry without experimenting on priceless delicate (易损的)  works of art, she points out.

Now, the researchers don't know the dye's stability(稳定性)and its ability against the environment that may wear and break it down over time. "To know such information is necessary if we desire to make these colors last long enough," Maria said. "So our study will continue."