It's Sunday afternoon. It's my son's eighth birthday tomorrow. I go into a cake shop to buy a big birthday cake for him.

      When I get there, the shop is full of people. When I am looking for a cake, I find a little boy watching the cakes for a long time. He is in poor clothes. At last he picks a cake. Then he gives money to the salesgirl and says to her, “I want the small cake.”

  “Sorry, the cake is 20 yuan, but you only pay 10 yuan.” says the salesgirl.

  “I …I have no more money.” says the little boy and he begins to cry. “Oh , my boy. Who would you like to buy the birthday cake for?” I ask.

 “My mom, madam.”

“Why doesn't she come and buy one?”

“My father left us a few years ago,” the boy says. “we don't have money. My mother has to work from morning to night every day. She celebrates my birthday every year, but she never celebrates her birthday. It's her birthday tomorrow. I want to buy a small cake for her. But I don't have enough money…”

“Oh, my boy! I'm your mother's friend,” I say. “I will buy her a nice birthday cake.”I give the money to the salesgirl and leave the shop.

    One year, a college in the United States announced that it would offer a lot of money for the pure white marigold(金盏花). The high reward attracted so many people, but in the nature, besides golden, the marigold is brown, and it is not easy to get the white one. So after they were excited for a time, many people had forgotten the announcement.

    One normal day after 20 years, the college received a letter and 100 seeds of pure white marigold. It was an old woman of over 70 years old. Some experts in the college doubted it, but in order not to let her down, those seeds finally took root (根）in the earth. The miracle appeared after one year; the field was covered by pure white marigold.

    Therefore, the old woman who was always unknown to the public became a new focus.

    The old woman was a flower-lover. When she read the announcement 20 years ago, she got very excited like others. But her eight children were totally against her decision. After all, a woman who never knew the seed genetics(遗传学) couldn't complete what the experts could never do, so her thought was only a day dream.

    Still, the old woman didn't change her mind and went on working. She planted some of the most common seeds and took good care of them. A year later, when the marigold came out, she chose one faintest(最暗淡的) from those golden and brown flowers and got the best seed. The next year, she again grew them and chose...Day after day, year after year, through many seasons, the old woman's husband died, her children flew far, a lot of things happened in her life, but only the wish to grow the pure white marigold took root in her heart.

    Finally, after 20 years on the day we all know, in the garden she saw a marigold, which was nearly white, but as white as silver or snow.

    A problem even experts couldn't deal with was solved by an old woman who didn't understand genetics. Was it a miracle  (奇迹）?

To take root in the heart, even the most common seed, can grow into a miracle!

    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.

    Dreams are like stars. You may never catch them, but if you follow them, they will lead you to success. Yan Ning is such a dream follower.

Yan is a rising star in the science world. When Yan Ning was only a little girl, she dreamed of being a great scientist. After years of hard work, in 1996, she went to Tsinghua University to study biology. After graduating from Tsinghua in 2000, she went to Princeton University and finished her study abroad in 2007. Then she returned to Tsinghua and set up her own lab. At the age of 30, she became the youngest professor(教授)at Tsinghua.

    Now. Yan, 42, has become a leading biology researcher at Princeton. On April 30, she was included among the 100 new members and 25 foreign associates(院士)into the US Natinal Academy of Science(国家料学院)

    However, it was a long and difficult road for her to make such achievements. She said that in order to realize her dream, she experienced a lot of failures and pains. But she never gave up her dream. Instead, she followed her dream and fought for it.

    She usually works at least I4 hours a day. Sometimes she even forgets to eat and rest and works until late night. She never gets tired because she thinks doing research is the most "comfortable" job for her.

In a TV interview, Yan encouraged young people to work hard for their dreams. "All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to follow them."

    The cold wind blew strongly outside. Amaya was warm in her house, thinking about an article she'd read at school. The article was about kids who helped out their communities, and she thought it would be really cool to help her own town, Harvard.

    The only problem was that she wasn't sure how to help. In the article, the kids had grown food for people who needed food, but it was winter. She couldn't start a garden. Amaya was deep in thought when her mom said it was time to go shopping.

    As they drove along the road, Amaya saw a family walking on the sidewalk( 人 行 道 ), wearing only light jackets. How cold they must be! That gave her an idea! She could collect winter coats, hats and gloves for people who needed them.

    She shared her idea with her mom, who thought it was great. But how would they spread the idea to get plenty of winter clothing? Amaya decided to talk to her teacher, because then she could share her idea with her classmates at least.

    Ms. Monroe agreed when Amaya talked about her idea. They decided to call the project Hats in Harvard. Then they wrote a letter explaining the project. Ms. Monroe even said she could help Amaya talk to the headmaster about  it, so they could get the whole school to join in it. They met with the headmaster during lunch time. He was excited about the idea, and said he would make sure copies(复印件) of the letter went home with all the students.

    They collected enough winter clothing in only one week. Then they left the clothes around two parks, so families who needed clothes could get them there. Three days later, Amaya and her mom went shopping again. She saw the same family that had given her the idea for Hats in Harvard. This time, though, the family looked nice and warm in some new coats, hats and gloves. Amaya felt warm in her heart, and was very glad she could help others.

    One day, as a Chinese teacher walked into his classroom, he heard Tom Andrews whisper to another boy, "Here comes the teacher. I'm sure the silly donkey is going to talk about putting in commas(送号). "The teacher said nothing but decided to teach him a good lesson. Now the teacher began his class, and talked about putting in commas, and explained how important they could be. " I'll give you an example, "said the teacher. He wrote on the blackboard the sentence: "Tom Andrews says the Chinese teacher is a foolish donkey. " The class laughed and looked at Tom, Tom looked red and he thought the Chinese teacher also knew English well. " Now, "said the teacher, "Let me show you how important commas are. He put two commas into the sentence and it was. Tom Andrews, says the teacher, is a foolish donkey. " Only at that time Tom knew the importance of commas and felt terribly sorry for his words.