Kate, Jack and Sam are good friends. They are in the same school.Kate and Jack are classmates. But Sam is in a different grade－Grade Three. They often do sports or play games after school.

    This evening Jack is going to Sam's birthday party and he is going to give him a new book for his birthday because he likes reading very much. Kate wants to go to the party, too. But she has to stay at home because her mother isn't feeling well. She asks Jack to take a present to Sam for his birthday. She wants to give Sam a different present, so she gives him a very mice new pen.

    Animals are our good friends. Some are active and others are quiet. But do you know anything about the clever animals in the world? Just have a look!

    If anyone can be called a scientific giant after Albert Einstein, that person must be Stephen Hawking. He was born in Oxford, England on Jan. 8th, 1942. What a pity On March 14th, 2018, the world-famous British scientist1in Cambridge, UK.

    After leaving high school Hawking went first to Oxford University 2he studied physics and then went to Cambridge University where he studied cosmology(宇宙学). As he himself admitted, he didn't work hard. And he did 3work. However, he always enjoyed thinking everything around him, especially the universe. Today, he is called the King of the Universe.

    It was at the age of 21 that Hawking first4something was wrong with him. He started to bump into some things. When he visited his family at Christmas time, his mother was so worried that she 5 him see a doctor. Hawking was sent to hospital for tests. Finally, the result came back. He6to have motor neuron disease(运动神经元病), an incurable illness which would make him unable to speak, breathe or move 7the help of a machine. Doctors said they had no ways to help him. He might die before 23.

    8, Hawking became very depressed. After a while, though, he began to see his life in a different way. As he later wrote, “After my illness was diagnosed(诊断), I was very9with life. There had not seemed to be anything worth doing. But shortly after I came out of hospital, I suddenly realized that there were a lot of worthwhile(值得做的) things I could do."Then Hawking got married and found a job at Cambridge University as a professor. We strongly believe that his story shows that 10, how had 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.”

    Smokejumpers are special firefighters. They jump from planes into areas that are difficult to reach by car or on foot, like the middle of a mountain forest. They race to put out fires as fast as they can.

    At a fire site, smokejumpers first check the land and decide how to fight the fire. They try their best to stop a fire from spreading. Using their tools, smokejumpers clear the land of burnable things like dry grass and leaves. They usually carry some water with them.

    In the US, although most smokejumpers are men, more women are joining. The important thing is that your height and weight must be within a certain range(范围). For example, smokejumpers in the US must be between 120 and 200 pounds, so they don't get hurt when they land, or get blown by strong winds.

    Smokejumpers must also be able to live in the wilderness. In Russia, many smokejumpers know how to find food in the forest and make simple tools.

    The work is dangerous, and the hours are long. But for smokejumpers, smokejumping isn't just a job. They love being able to jump out of planes, fight fires, and live in the forest. As 28-year-old proud Russian smokejumper Alexi Tishin says, "This is the best job for brave people."

    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.