One midnight, a little girl woke up to pass water. She by herself got up and down her bed, walked to the bedroom door and opened it. She looked outside and walked back, for it was so dark in the hall that she feared.
Her mother said, “Don't be afraid, honey. Take courage!”
“What's courage?” she asked, running to her mother's bed.
“Courage is the brave breath,” her mother answered.
“Mum, do you have courage?”
“Certainly.”
The girl held out her little hands, saying, “Mum, blow some of your breath of courage to me.”
After her mother blew out two mouthfuls of breath into her little cold hands, the little girl clenched her fists(握拳) nervously, afraid that the “breath of courage” would run away. Then with her fists clenched, she walked out of the bedroom towards the bathroom with nothing to fear.
Her mother said to herself, “It will be nice if someone can blow some kind of ‘breath' to me. Then I can hold it in my hands too when I feel terrified or lost.”
In fact, mostly, what we are terrified of is nothing but the fear in our mind. Who we should defeat(战胜) is nobody but ourselves.

A 108-year-old Message in a Bottle

    On November 30, 1906, George Bidder dropped a bottle from a boat into the North Sea. The weighted glass bottle sank almost to the sea floor, and then it move slowly for 108 years and 138 days.

    Its journey ended when Marianne Winkler found the bottle in 2015. Winkler was then on vacation on Amrum Island. She picked up the bottle when it was washed up onto the beach. She saw a piece of paper inside, but didn't break it open. She could tell that the bottle was old. So she didn't want to damage it.

    Finally she got the piece of paper out of the bottle. She found that the paper was actually a postcard. On the back of the card there was this message: The Marine Biological Association（海洋生物学协会） would pay a shilling（先令） for the bottle. A shilling was a unit of money that was used in Great Britain before the early 1970s.

    Winkler filled out the card and posted it. The association was surprised to get a postcard addressed to George Bidder, the president of the association from 1939 to 1945. The workers of the association searched on the Internet to find a shilling. They found one and sent it to Winkler as a reward.

    The message in the bottle was the oldest ever re-discovered. For this reason Marianne Winkler got a place in  “Guinness World Records”（吉尼斯世界纪录）. She broke the record for the oldest message in a bottle.

    Winkler's bottle was not the only one Bidder sent to sea. Between 1904 and 1906, he spent away more than one thousand bottles. He placed postcards inside them. The bottles were part of a research  project to map currents（洋流） in the North Sea. This was the best method at that time. But whether the association could get the bottles back depended on the people who found them. The association reported that about 55 percent of the bottles were returned. They added that the experiment was a success as it showed the east-to-west flow of the North Sea's currents.

    It's seven o'clock in the morning in Chennai, India Lavin always has her morning bath before school. But she doesn't have a bath at home. She has a bath in a small river outside with her best friend, a baby elephant.

    Lavin lives at Arignar Anna Zoo with her parents, brothers and sisters. Her father works at the zoo and he is a special keeper for the baby elephants. Lavin is only six years old, but she can control(控制)the elephants and she has a very special friendship with them.

    At eight o'clock in the morning, Lavin goes to school, but she doesn't go on the school bus. She rides an elephant to school. After school, Lavin plays football with her elephants.

    Now it is the evening, and the baby elephants are tired Lavin sits next to them and sings to them. Sometimes, they all sleep together-friends together in the day and friends together at night.

    Years ago I worked at a factory in a small county. Every day I got up very early and often did much extra work at night. I was so tired and exhausted. My whole life was hopeless. Then one day I read the following article from a magazine：

    "A woman went to live with her husband in camp on the Mojave Desert（沙漠）during the war. She simply hated the place: the heat was almost unbearable, 125degrees in the shade, the wind blew incessantly, and there was sand-sand everywhere. Finally, in desperation（不顾-切地）she wrote her parents in Ohio that she couldn't stand it another minute and was coming home.

    Quickly came the reply by airmail from her father just two lines：

    'Two men looked out from prison bars. One saw the mud, the other saw stars.'

    The daughter did some real thinking, not only with the intellect（思维）but also with her heart. She decided to stick to her post.

    She made friends with the natives, learned to love the country, and eventually wrote a book about it. The desert hadn't changed, but her attitude had. Because she listened with her heart to the words her father sent, a whole new world opened up to her. "

    A change of attitude could change everything. After reading the article, I was deep in thought（陷入沉思）.

    Gary Oldman is like the English version of Leonardo DiCaprio. They are both actors who are "underappreciated (未受到充分赏识的)", as GQ magazine said. DiCaprio didn't win his first Oscar until 2016 at the age of 42. In 2018, Oldman finally got his first Oscar at the age of 59 on March 5.

    He took home the Best Actor award at the 90th Academy Awards. He won the award for his performance as former British prime minister Winston Churchill in the movie Darkest Hour. Many believe that Oldman accurately reproduced Churchill's appearance and personality, such as his round body, large jowls and cigars (雪茄). Reporter Brian Truitt wrote in USA Today that after watching the movie for just 10 minutes, you forget that you're seeing Gary Oldman—there is just Winston Churchill.

    Oldman was already seen as an excellent actor even before winning his Oscar. In a 2015 survey, he was voted Greatest Actor to Never Win an Oscar, according to Ranker.com. He is known for his versatility (可塑性). His acting style is expressive due to his theater training. He has played many classic roles: the vampire (吸血鬼) Count Dracula in Dracula (《惊情四百年》), the corrupt (腐败的) policeman Norman Stansfield in Leon (《这个杀手不太冷》), and Harry Potter's noble godfather (教父) Sirius Black.

    Oldman said he acts not in order to win awards, but simply for the pleasure of acting. "Acting was my way out," Oldman told Interview magazine. "The fun of it was getting away from myself and stepping into the characteristics and the behavior of someone else."