My uncle has a very beautiful umbrella. He's had it for years. As he is very careful with it, so it still looks as good as new.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}He shook his head. "Then how did you get it?" I asked. "Well," he answered, "there's a strange true story about the umbrella. About ten years ago, I was walking along a quiet London street one evening when it suddenly rained. I had no raincoat or umbrella.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} And the people in the streets were fewer and fewer. As I was on my way to a party, I was afraid to get wet. So I stood in a doorway and waited for the rain to stop.

{#blank#}3{#/blank#} What was worse, there even wasn't a person around, and still it rained and rained. At last a young man came to the place where I was standing.{#blank#}4{#/blank#} As I hoped he would allow me to walk to the next corner with him, where I could get a taxi, I stepped out of the dark doorway where I had been standing.{#blank#}5{#/blank#} As I suddenly appeared before him, the young man was so shocked that he dropped the umbrella. He ran away and disappeared into the darkness. I picked up the umbrella and continued my walk. I knew it would be hard in this big city to find the owner, so I've kept it ever since."

    My mother only had one eye. I hated her, as she was such an embarrassment (难堪）for me. She ran a small shop at a market, selling anything for the money we needed.

    One day, my mom came to my school. I threw her a hateful look and ran out. The next day, my classmates shouted, “Your mom only has one eye!" and they taunted me. My face turned red.

I wished that my mom would just disappear from this world, so I said to her, “Mom, why don't you have the other eye? You make me a laughingstock.” She didn't say anything. Maybe it was because my mom hadn't punished me, so I didn't think that I had hurt her feelings very badly. I decided to study hard so that I could leave her for the rest of my life. I made it at last. Now I'm living happily as a successful man in another country.

Many years later, I received a letter, which said, “I think my life has been long enough now， but would it be too much to ask if I wanted you to visit me once in a while? I'm sorry that I am an embarrassment for you. You see, when you were very young, you got into an accident, and lost your eye. As a mother, I couldn't stand watching you having to grow up with only one eye, so I gave you mine. I was so proud of my son that was seeing a whole new world for me, in my place, with that eye. I was never angry with you for anything you did. I miss the time when you were still young around me. You mean the world to me. I love you.” I can't help crying with the letter in my hand.

    Peter is thirteen years old. He is in Grade Two this year. He likes to play football and watch football matches. And he often reads newspapers. He does his best to know where and when there is going to be a football match. Now Peter is having lunch. He is listening to the radio, too. He is very happy because there is going to be a nice football match on TV at four this afternoon. He wants to watch it very much. But he is going to have English and Chinese lessons. He thinks hard and finds a way.

    “ Hello, Mrs. Black,” Peter says to his teacher on the telephone, “ Peter is ill in bed. He wants to ask for half a day's leave ( 请半天假 ).”

    “ Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.” says Mrs. Black, “ But who's that?”

    “ It's my father, Mrs. Black.”

    A few years ago national attention was fixed on a deep, dark cave in the mountains near where I live now. A team had entered the cave to do some research. Although every precaution had been taken to make it safe, one young man was separated from the team and lost in the depths of the cave.

    For several days a rescue team worked around the clock, searching almost everywhere in the underground cave. With each passing hour chance of finding the young man inside the cave became smaller, and people had a lot of guesses. Perhaps he had simply run away. Or maybe he had stumbled out some other entrance and was now lost in the mountains. Or perhaps he was already... well, nobody wanted to say it. But everybody thought it. Everybody, that is, except the young man's parents.

    "That wasn't a choice in our opinion," the young man's mother said." Finally we would find him—safe and alive. We were certain of that."

    There was little reason to those who were familiar with the cave said it had been completely searched-several times. Common sense suggested that time was running out and that other choices needed to be considered—like when to say "enough".

    But like Kris Kringle says in his famous book A Miracle on 34th Street, "Faith is believing in something even when common sense tells you not to do." And the young man's parents had faith. They wouldn't give up, and they wouldn't let anyone else give up, either. And sure enough, the young man was found—hungry, thirst and afraid, but healthy.

    How did the young man manage to stay a live in the cave?

    "I've never stopped believing that someone would find me," said the young man.

    The class teachers thought that hobbies were important to children. So she encouraged all her students to have one, and sometimes she arranged hobby shows for their parents to see.

    One morning, the teacher told the class to have a holiday and get their hobby things to school before 5 pm. A hobby show would be held the following afternoon.

    So in the afternoon, the students with nothing to show did their lessons at school as usual, while the lucky ones had a holiday to go home for their hobby works.

    When the afternoon lessons began, the teacher was surprised to see that Tommy was not there. "I don't believe Tommy has a hobby, "she thought. However, at a quarter to five, Tommy arrived with a beautiful collection of butterflies（蝴蝶）in glass cases. The teacher liked the samples（标本）very much and put them on a desk in the classroom. But, to her surprise, Tommy picked them up again and began to leave.

    "What are you doing, Tommy?" she asked. "Those things must stay here until tomorrow afternoon. That's when the parents are coming to see them. "

    "I know that, "answered Tommy, "and I will bring them back tomorrow, but my big brother doesn't want them to be out of our house at night. ""

    But, aren't the butterflies yours?" asked the teacher.

    "No, "answered Tommy." They are my brother's."

    "But Tommy, you should show your own hobby here, not somebody else's!"

    "I know that, "answered Tommy. What surprises her most was the answer. "My hobby is watching my brother collecting butterflies."

    Many people think heroes need to be handsome, rich, or very smart. But as for me, a hero is a person who always helps others. My hero is Uncle Bill. He is the oldest son of a worker, and he grew up in a poor family with four younger brothers and two little sisters.

    He was good at neither writing nor maths. In fact, he never did well in school. So he had to give up school at a very young age. He worked and gave all his money to help his parents. When he was getting older, he found that he was very interested in fixing things. He collected broken things which people threw away and fixed them. He could fix almost everything that did not work. He worked hard and never gave up. Finally, he opened his own repair shop. It took him about 20 years to become a successful shopkeeper.

    Now, he is very rich and has four shops. But he never forgets the days when he had nothing. He gives money to poor families, helps poor kids buy books and offers them free lunch. He also encourages people to reuse things. He always says, "Make good use of what you have because we just have one earth."

    I am proud of Uncle Bill. He is really a hero.