Once a great boxer(拳击手), Tom Brown, went to a restaurant for dinner. He put his bag near the door, but he was afraid that someone would take it away. So he got out a pen and a piece of paper and wrote on it, “The great boxer, Tom Brown, left his bag here and he will be back in a few minutes.”

    He put the paper on his bag and went to have his dinner. When he came back, his bag wasn't there. But he found a piece of paper on the ground. It said, “A great runner took away your bag, and will not be back.”

    There was a time when no one knew the name Harry Potter. Now the adventures of this extraordinary student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry are read in over 45 languages, including Russian, Thai, and even ancient Greek. No one can explain the Harry Potter phenomenon (现象) – not even J.K. Rowling, his creator.

    J.K. Rowling was born in England in 1965. From a young age, she knew she wanted to be a writer. When she was 6, she wrote her first story—about a rabbit that gets sick. At school, she used to make up stories to tell her friends.

    After graduation from college, she worked as a secretary. But she didn't give up her dream.She spent her lunch hour writing stories, mainly for adults. Then in 1990, on a train trip to London,she got the idea from the boy wizard. She says he just appeared in her head. She soon created many other characters to help Harry fight the forces of darkness.

    She kept working on the story while she was teaching English in Portugal, where she married, had her first child, and divorced (与……离婚) a year later. When she returned to England, she brought back a box of Harry Potter stories.

    After returning home, she was broke and living in a small house. She continued writing, and in 1995, finished the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It was published (出版) in 1997 and became an unexpected bestseller.

    Rowling's life has changed a lot. She has become internationally famous and now earns around $40 million a year. She remarried, had a second child and lives in Scotland now.

    Curly is my big dog. He is so strong that he can carry everything on his back. He likes to run and play with me. He likes to follow my father around in the fields, too.

    One day my father took off his coat and put it on the ground under a big tree. Curly stood watching him. My father said, "Watch my coat, Curly." Curly sat down on the coat. My father forgot all about his coat and went home without it. Late in the evening I missed my dog. I looked everywhere for him, calling, "Curly, Curly" but Curly did not come. Soon my father wanted something that was in his coat pocket. Then he remembered what he had done. He went back to the big tree. What do you think he saw? Curly was sitting on the coat so that nobody could carry it away.

    On a cold winter day, a fox told Mother Bear that he would teach her how to fish Mother Bear wanted to learn, so the fox took her to a hole in the ice and told her to put her tail(尾巴)down into the water.

    He told her to keep the tail there for a long time. Then when she pulled the tail out of the water, she would find fish around the tail.

    The bear was foolish enough to believe what the fox said. She sat for a long time with her tail in the water. She was waiting for the fish. But when she tried to pull her tail out of the water, she found that it was frozen(冻结)in the ice.

    She asked the fox to pull her out, but the fox laughed at her and ran away. So she called Father Bear to help her.

    Father Bear came. He pulled her hard and at last got her out. But a part of her tail was in the ice. That is why people find the bear's tail so short.

    We spent a day in the country and picked a lot of flowers. Our car was full of flowers inside! On the way home we had to stop at traffic lights, and there my wife saw the bookshelf.

    It stood outside a furniture shop. "Buy it," she said at once. "We'll carry it home on the roof-rack(车顶架). I've always wanted one like that."

    What could I do? Ten minutes later I was twenty dollars poorer, and the bookshelf was tied onto the roof-rock. It was tall and narrow, quite heavy, too.

    As it was getting darker, I drove slowly. Other drivers seemed more polite than usual that evening. The police even stopped traffic to let us through. Carrying furniture was a good idea.

    After a time my wife said, "There's a long line of cars behind. Why don't they overtake(超车)?"

    Just at that time a police car did overtake. The two officers inside looked at us seriously when they went past. But then, with a kind smile, they asked us to follow their car through the busy traffic. The police car stopped at our village church. One of the officers came to me. "Right, Sir," he said. "Do you need any more help now?"

    I didn't quite understand. "Thanks, officer," I said. "You've been very kind. I lived just down the road."

    He was looking at our things: first at the flowers, then at the bookshelf. "Well, well," he said and laughed. "It's a bookshelf you've got there! We thought it was something else. "My wife began to laugh. Suddenly I understood why the police drove here.

    I smiled at the officer. "Yes, it's a bookshelf, but thanks again." I drove home as fast as I could.