Hans Christian Andersen was born in Denmark in 1805. He lived with his parents in a town called Odense. They were a very poor family and they couldn't afford to send Hans Christian to school.

    As a little boy, Hans Christian enjoyed making up fairy tales(童话) and puppet(木偶) shows. When he was only eleven years old, his father died and he had to go out to work to make money to help his mother.

    Three years later, Hans Christian left home and went to the city of Copenhagen to be famous and rich. To begin with he didn't do very well there, but at last he was able to go back to school and then on to university to continue his education.

    He wrote fairy tales and stories and soon became famous. At first he wrote the stories that he had heard when he was a child and then began to make up new tales. During his seventy-one year life. Hans Christian wrote over three hundred stories.

    Many of his stories are still enjoyed by children today. Among his best-known stories are: the Emperor's New Clothes, the Ugly Duckling, the Snow Queen, the Princess and the Pea, and the little Mermaid.

    I live in Mentone, a quiet, simple, restful place, where the rich never come. I met Theophile Magnan, a retired, rich, old man from Lyons yesterday. In the Hotel des Anglais. Theophile looked sad and dreamy, and didn't talk with anybody else. Which brought me back to the past.

A long time ago, Francois Millet. Claude, Carl and I were young artists — very young artists — in fact.

    Yes, Francois Millet. The great French artist, was my friend.

Millet wasn't any greater than we were at that time. He didn't have any fame, even in his own village.

    We were all poor though we had stacks and stacks of as good pictures as anybody in Europe painted. Once a person ever offered four francs for Millet's "Angelus", which he intended to sell for eight.

    It was a fact in human history that a great artist would never be acknowledged* until after he was starved and dead. His pictures climbed to high prices after his death.

    Then we made a decision that one of us must die, to save the others and himself.

    Millet was elected to die.

    During the next three months Millet painted with all his might, enlarged his stock all he could, not pictures, not sketches, studies, parts of studies, fragments of studies, of course, with his cipher *  on them.

    They were the things to be sold.

    Carl went to Paris to start the work of building up Millet's name. Claude and I went to sell Millet's small pictures and to build up his name as well.

    We made Millet a master. I always said to my customer, "I am a fool to sell a picture of Francois Millet's at all, for he is not going to live three months, and when he dies his pictures can't be had for love or money."

    Claude and I took care to spread that little fact as far as we could.

Carl made friends with the correspondents, and got Millet's condition reported to England and all over the continent, and America, and everywhere.

    The sad end came at last, Millet died, not really.  He became Theophile Magnan.

    The pictures went up. There's a man in Paris today who owns seventy Millet pictures. He paid us two million francs for them. Do you still remember the "Angelus"? Carl sold it for twenty—two hundred francs. And as for the bushels of sketches and studies which Millet produced in the last six weeks, well, it would astonish you to know the figure we sell them at nowadays.

    We are no longer artists and Millet dead.

    One day, a mouse saw a mousetrap(老鼠夹)in the farmer's house. He said to his friends on the farm, "There is a mousetrap in the house!"

    The chicken said," There is no need for me to worry about it."

    The pig said," It has nothing to do with me!"

    The cow said, "It sounds like you have a problem."

    The mouse was sad, because no one cared about his problem or would help him.

    One night, a snake bit(咬)the farmer's wife. Soon the wife caught a fever. The farmer decided to kill the chicken and made chicken soup for his wife.

    Later, the wife got sicker and her friends came to visit her. The farmer killed the pig to feed them.

    In the end, the farmer's wife died. Many people came to her funeral (葬礼), so the farmer killed the cow to feed all of them.

    Let's remember that when any one is in trouble, we are all at risk(有危险).

    One day Tom and Bill went out for a walk. On the road they saw a lot of people and went up to have a look. Oh dear! There was a cow in the middle of the road. It would not move. The cars and buses couldn't get past. Then a policeman came.

    "Whose cow is this?" He asked. "It's mine," said a farmer, "but I can't move it."

    The policeman and the farmer did their best to move the cow, but it would not move.

    Tom and Bill laughed, but the drivers of cars and buses were worried." We can't move the cow, "the farmer and the policeman said. "What shall we do?"

    "Give him a cabbage!" Tom said. "That's a good idea." said the farmer. Soon he found a cabbage and showed it to the cow. When the cow saw the cabbage, it walked after the farmer at once. All the cars and buses could get past at last.