Alice needs some money for a Mother's Day present. She tells her father about her problem.

    "I'll pay you to do some housework. You can clean up the yard(院子)," her father says.

    "You can also wash my car and Mum's. Both of them need to be washed because they're really dirty."

    Alice works on the yard and washes her father's car.

    "Too bad! You didn't have time to wash Mum's car," Dad says when he pays her.

    The next morning Alice wakes up early. First she washes her mother's car. Then she goes to the flower shop. She also buys her mother's favourite bread on her way home. After breakfast Alice asks her mother to go to the garage(车库). She opens the gate.

    "Wow!" Alice's mother says. "My car is gleaming."

    "Open the door," Alice says.

    Alice's mother opens the door. There on the seat she sees a bunch of flowers.

    "Happy Mother's Day!" Alice says.

    Mark Twain left school when he was twelve. He had little school education. In spite of this, he became the most famous writer of his time. He made millions of dollars by writing. His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, but he is better known all over the world as Mark Twain, his penname.

    Mark Twain was born in 1835 and he was not a healthy baby. In fact, he was not expected to live through the first winter. But with his mother's care, he managed to survive. As a boy, he caused much trouble for his parents. He used to play jokes on all his friends and neighbors. He didn't like to go to school, and he often ran away from home. He always went in the direction of the nearby Mississippi. He was nearly drowned nine times.

    After his father's death, Mark Twain began to work for a printer, who only provided him with food and clothing. Then, he worked as a printer, a river-boat pilot and later joined the army. But shortly after that he became a miner. During this period, he started to write short stories. Afterwards he became a full time writer.

    In 1870, Mark Twain got married. In the years that followed he wrote many books including Tom Sawyer in 1876, and Huckleberry Finn in 1884, which made him famous, and brought him great fortune.

    Unfortunately, Mark Twain got into debts in bad investments(投资) and he had to write large numbers of stories to pay these debts. In 1904, his wife died, and then three of his children passed away.

    At the age of 70, his hair was completely white. He bought many white suits and neckties. He wore nothing but white from head to foot until his death on April 21, 1910.

    I have a friend named Monty Roberts who owns a horse ranch(牧马场). The last time I was there he told me his story. When he was young, his family was too poor to have a house to live in.As a result , when he was in high school, all the students were asked to write a paper about what they wanted to be and do when they grew up. That night he wrote a seven-page paper describing his goal of owning a horse ranch. He also drew a picture to show a 4,000-square-foot house that would sit on a beautiful farm. The next day he handed it in to his teacher. Two days later he received his paper back. On the front page was a large red F. Roberts asked, “Why did I receive an F?” He teacher said, “This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you. Owning a horse ranch requires a lot of money.” Then the teacher added, “If you will rewrite this paper with a more realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade.”

    The boy went home and thought about it for a long and hard time. He asked his father what he should do. His father said, “ Look, son, you have to make up your own mind on this. However, I think it is a very important decision for you.”Finally, after sitting with it for a week, the boy turned in the same paper, making no changes at all. He told his teacher “you could keep the F and I still keep my dream”.

    He tells me this story because I am sitting in his 4,000-square-foot house in the middle of the 200-acre horse ranch. “I still have that school paper now.” He added, “The best part of the story is that two years ago that  teacher brought 30 kids to camp out on my ranch for a week.” When the teacher was leaving, he said, Look, Monty, I can tell you this now. When I was your teacher, I was something of a dream stealer.During those years I stole a lot of kids' dreams. Luckily, you had enough gumption not to give up on yours. .”

    Many people thought that U.S. President Calvin Coolidge always lived in the White House. However, he sometimes lived in the nearby Willard Hotel.

    Once, in the middle of a night, the President woke up to see a thief searching his clothes. Coolidge calmly spoke up from the darkness, “I wish you wouldn't take that watch.”

    “Why?” asked the shocked man.

    Coolidged answered, “Take it near the window and read what is engraved（雕刻） on the back of it.”

    The man read, “Presented to Calvin Coolidged, Speaker of the House, by the Massachusetts General Court.” He was very surprised!

    “Are you President Coolidge?” he asked. He had never thought he would find the president sleeping in a hotel!

    “Yes, I am.” Coolidge said. Then he asked, “Why are you doing this, Son?”

    The young man explained that he and two friends traveled to Washington during their college vacation. They spent all of their money and had no money to pay the hotel bill and the train tickets back to school.

    Coolidge added up the cost. It came to $32. That may not sound like much now, but it was a big number then. “I'll give you the $32 as a loan(借款）,” the President said, “And I expect you to pay me back.”

    The young man thanked him. Coolidge left him with this warning: “Son, you are a nice boy, you are better than you are acting. You are starting down the wrong road. Just remember who you are.”

    It wasn't until after the death of Mr. Coolidge that this story was allowed to come out. It was first published in the newspaper Los Angeles Times. And the most interesting of all is that the President's notes show that the young man was indeed better than he was acting. He repaid the $32 loan in full.

    World famous physicist(物理学家) Stephen Hawking died peacefully at his home in Cambridge on March 14th, 2018.

    Hawking was born in Oxford, England on January 8th, 1942. He went to school in a small city near London. As he himself admitted, he wasn't very serious about studying. He did very little work, he was never top of his class. However, he still achieved good marks. After leaving school, Hawking first went to Oxford University to study physics. Then he went to Cambridge University to study cosmology(宇宙学).

    At the age of 21, Hawking noticed something wrong with him. He had a bad illness that stopped him from moving and talking. He couldn't communicate except by blinking(眨眼). He sat on a wheelchair with a computer by his side. To communicate with others, he moved two fingers to control the computer's mouse. He chose his words from the screen, which were then spoken by a voice synthesizer(音响合成器). "I've had the disease for most of my life," Hawking once said, "Yet it has not stopped me from being successful at my work."

    Although Hawking was a disabled man, he made great achievements. He received many awards and prizes for his work, including the Albert Einstein Award—the highest achievement in physics.

    Hawking worked at Cambridge University as a professor. His story shows that nobody, however bad their situation is, should lose hope. "Life is not fair." he once said, "You just have to do the best you can in your own situation."

    Today I am going along with Rowan Dougall, a postman in Queensland in the far north of Australia, on his daily delivery（投递 trip. Every day, Rowan sets off with his post bags in the tail of his little plane--not much bigger than a large family car, and flies across one of the wildest places on Earth, Australia's Cape North, to reach the very faraway inland areas called the Outback.

    We fly just 300 metres above dangerous crocodiles(鳄鱼) and snakes. This is one of the longest and most expensive postman trips in the world.  However, a 50-cent stamp not only gets a letter posted to a neighbouring town, it will get it hand-delivered by flying postman to the furthest areas of the Outback. To help with the costs, the plane takes three or four paying local people or tourists, and I am one of them. In the back of the plane, there is a pile of post--envelopes of all sizes, newspapers, and a few parcels(包裹). Somehow I expected this post to look special, maybe to include some hats or cowboy boots, but this looks no more exciting than the post delivered to me in England. I look at some of the names and addresses, wondering about the people who are waiting for these letters and parcels.

    Rowan's route is 2,000 km long, with 15 stops, and I get a chance to meet Sandy, who has just received an order of clothes from a store. "I look forward to this weekly delivery," she says, "but I do miss actually going shopping myself." Rowan is checking the time. There are another ten stops to make before dusk(黄昏). Time to leap back on the plane and up into the air.