Before leaving his job in Brooklyn, Brian Peter had one thing he wanted to do on his last day-say thank you to the city he loves. Peter decided to use the money he made for a day's work, as well as the $10 per year he earned for his service, to give back to his community. "I've got nothing but good things from the city and the citizens, "Peter said. "I take what I make in a day and add that $120 that the police association was going to give me, and I'll just add it up to $500 and get some gift cards for people. "

So after fourteen years' serving as a police officer, Peter spent his last day doing that. Using his own money, Peter purchased five gift cards from Target and five gift cards from the grocery chain Cub Foods worth $50 each and handed them out to strangers in Brooklyn Center.

It took him about two hours to give away the cards and that he could put smiles on a lot of people's faces, including one woman he stopped after noticing the condition of her car. "Her car was really old and really damaged. I saw her windshield wipers were stuck in the up position, "Peter recalled. "I explained what I was doing and gave her a gift card, and immediately, she lit up with a smile. "

Once people overcame the initial shock of what he was doing, Peter said he received a lot more hugs that day. Monique Drier, who stayed with Peter, said Peter has always wanted to give back and didn't really want the attention. "He didn't even have a going-away party, "Drier said.

Peter, who started his new job three days ago, said he still wanted to continue giving back to the community. "Community service is extremely important, and when you're fortunate in life, you should give back to others who aren't as fortunate as you, "Peter said. "That's what makes the world go round. "

Lisa was running late. Lisa，25，had a lot to do at work，plus visitors on the way: her parents were coming in for Thanksgiving from her hometown. But as she hurried down the subway stairs， she started to feel uncomfortably warm. By the time she got to the platform，Lisa felt weak and tired--maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to give blood the night before，she thought. She rested herself against a post(柱子) close to the tracks.

Several yards away，Frank，43，and his girlfriend，Jennifer，found a spot close to where the front of the train would stop. They were deep in discussion about a house they were thinking of buying.

But when he heard the scream，followed by someone yelling，“Oh，my God，she fell in!” Frank didn’t hesitate. He jumped down to the tracks(铁轨) and ran some 40 feet toward the body lying on the rails. “No! Not you! ”his girlfriend screamed after him.

She was right to be alarmed. By the time Frank reached Lisa，he could feel the tracks shaking and see the light coming. The train was about 20 seconds from the station.

It was hard to lift her. She was just out(昏迷的). But he managed to raise her the four feet to the platform so that bystanders could hold her by the arms and drag her away from the edge. That was where Lisa briefly regained consciousness(知觉)，felt herself being pulled along the ground，and saw someone else holding her purse.

Lisa thought she’d been robbed. A woman held her hand and a man gave his shirt to help stop the blood pouring from her head. And she tried to talk but she couldn’t，and that was when she realized how much pain she was in.

Police and fire officials soon arrived，and Frank told the story to an officer. Jennifer said her boyfriend was calm on their 40-minute train ride downtown——just as he had been seconds after the rescue，which made her think about her reaction at the time. “I saw the train coming and 1 was thinking he was going to die，”she explained.

When memory began for me, my grandfather (“Gramp”) was past sixty. The little marks of laughter at the corners of his eyes were the product of a kindly and humorous nature. The years of work which had bent his shoulders had never reduced his humor or his love of a joke. Everywhere he went, Gramp made friends easily. At the end of half an hour you felt you had known him all your life. I soon learned that he hated to give orders, but that when he had to, he tried to make his orders sound like suggestions.

One July morning, as he was leaving to go to the cornfield, he said: “Edwin, you can pick up the potatoes in the field today if you want to do that.” Then he drove away with his horses. The day passed, and I did not have any desire to pick up potatoes. Evening came and the potatoes were still in the field. Gramp, dusty and tired, led the horses to get their drink.

“How many potatoes did you pick up?”Gramp inquired.“I didn’t pick any.” “Not any! Why?” “You said I could pick them up if I wanted to. You didn’t say I had to.” In the next few minutes, I learned a lesson I will not forget: when Gramp said I could if I wanted to, he meant that I should want to.

My grandmother (“Gram”) worked hard all day, washing clothes, cleaning the house, making butter, and even working in the field when help was scarce. In the evening, though, she was not too tired to read books from the community library. For more than forty years, Gram read aloud to Gramp almost every evening. In this way, she and Gramp learned about all the great battles of history and became familiar with the works of great authors and the lives of famous men.

She also had a deep love of beauty. When she was almost seventy-five and had gone to live with one of her daughters, she spent a delightful morning washing dishes because, as she said, the beautiful pattern on the dishes gave her pleasure. The birds, the flowers, the clouds –– all that was beautiful around her –– pleased her. She was like the father of the French painter, Millet, who used to gather grass and show it to his son, saying, “See how beautiful this is!”

In a pioneer society it is the harder qualities of mind and character that are of value. The softer virtues are considered unnecessary. Men and women struggling daily to earn a living are unable, even for a moment, to forget the business of preserving their lives. Only unusual people, like my grandparents, managed to keep thesofter qualitiesin a world of daily struggle.

B

    Pennsylvania—When Connie Beck and her husband awoke to strange noises last weekend, they thought high winds were rattling (使……发出响声) their home.
    What they found was even more unexpected: A deer was taking a bubble (泡沫) bath in their bathtub（浴缸）.
    “I wasn’t exactly dressed for company,” Mrs. Beck said. “We were just waking up.”
    The deer burst through the front door early on Saturday, ran past the couple’s bedroom and into the bathroom.
     Somehow he managed to turn on the water in the bathtub and knock over踢翻 a bottle of bubble bath into the bathtub. He then got himself into the bubbly water.
    “You could hear the water running over the kicking,” Beck said.
    The Becks called State Game Commission officials, who arrived with tranquilizers (镇静剂) and a lot of laughter.
     “A guy said, ‘There's nothing wrong… he's just in there taking a bubble bath,' ” Mrs. Beck said.
     The animal was soon brought under control, removed from the house and released.
     “He was unharmed except for a little cut above the eye,” said Mrs. Beck. “We were also fortunate. There wasn't much damage, except for the front door, some marks on the tub, and a few hoof (蹄) prints on the floor.”

B

The week I turned 50，my marriage came to a sudden end .My house，furniture and everything I'd owned were sold to pay debts that I didn't even know I had .In a week I had lost my husband，my home and my parents who had refused to accept a divorce（离婚）in the family. I'd lost everything except my four teenage children .I used every penny I had to buy five plane tickets from Missouri to Hawaii. Everyone said I was crazy to think I could just run off to an island and survive .I was afraid they were right.

     Knowing that no one in the world was going to help us，I rented a cheap apartment .I worked 18 hours a day and lost 30 pounds because I lived on one meal a day. One night as I walked alone on the beach，I saw the red orange glow of the lava（火山岩）pouring out of Kilauea Volcano in the distance .It was time to live my imagination!

     The next day，I quit my job and invested my last paycheck in art supplies and began doing what I loved .I hadn't painted a picture in 15 years .I wondered if I could still paint. My hands trembled the first time I picked up a brush．But before an hour had passed，I was lost in the colors spreading across the canvas（画布）in front of me．And as soon as I started believing in myself，other people started believing in me，too. The first painting sold $1,500 before I even had time to frame it.

     The past six years have been filled with adventures. My children and I have gone swimming with dolphins，watched whales and hiked around the volcano. We wake up every morning with the ocean in front of us and the volcano behind us. The dream had more than 40 years ago is now reality.I'm living freely and happily ever after.

In a small town of the USA, under the protection of his loyal（忠诚的）and beloved dog, a lost boy was found safe and sound.

After 3-year-old Carson Urness went missing from his yard around 7:30 p.m. Monday, a search party of about 200 people was organized to find the child. About seven hours later, one of them found the golden German shepherd dog（牧羊犬）near a hill; Carson was hiding under the dog. It appeared the dog had used his body to shield the missing boy from a thunderstorm.

“It was unexpected, but then I knew Cooper was gone. If anyone was going to find him, they’d just have to find Cooper,” Carson’s mother told WDAZ-TV.

The boy and his dog were discovered about a mile away from the family’s Cooperstown farm. Though those on foot were called off from the search around 2 a.m. Tuesday because of heavy rain, ATV riders continued until one car found the dog.

As Carson rode back to the family home on the ATV, Cooper reportedly followed behind. The 3-year-old was taken to a local hospital for examination but appeared to be in good shape thanks to his loyal dog.

The boy’s father, Brock Urness told ABC News he was thankful to everyone who helped look for the boy. “We are very thankful to the police and local fire station and all the people with horses and cars and the walkers,” Urness told reporters.

This past July, to celebrate her 22nd birthday, Seton Hall University nursing  student Hillary Sadlon began--with her boyfriend Evan Reed and best friend Meghan Cox--a two-state, five-city and 10-hour goodwill tour. Sadlon’s purpose of her “Random Acts of Kindness” tour: bringing joy to others on a day.

“I truly believe you have two hands, one to help yourself and one to help others,” said Sadlon, who spent six months preparing for her most recent birthday.

Last winter, Sadlon saw an article about a young lady who performed 28 kind acts on her 28th birthday. She immediately went to work making a list of her own 22 acts to be completed on July 23rd, the day she was set to turn 22.

Among the most important acts she carried out during her birthday is donating（捐献）blood at Bethlehem’s Miller-Keystone Blood Center. Then, Sadlon was happy to pass along water, ice cream, flowers, gift and greeting cards to people including her mailman and her mother. She also helped to send cakes to a local police station and brought balloons to children. Besides, she donated supplies to the organization Common Sense for Animals.

One of the favorite moments of the day happened at Walmart. “My boyfriend and I went up to en elderly couple at Walmart and helped to put their goods into their car for them, ” she said. “When I explained what I was doing, they just kept telling me ‘You’re so amazing. There needs to be more kindness in this world.’ They actually wanted a picture of us.”

In the late afternoon, she stopped by her grandmother’s home and cleaned her front yard. The yard work was one of the final items on a list full of meaning--which she hopes will inspire（鼓舞）others to create lists of their own.

According to Sadlon, “It means so much when people come to me and say ‘I’m going to have my kids do this.’...Hopefully, maybe it can make the world a better place.”

B

Tim Richter and his wife, Linda, had taught for over 30 years near Buffalo, New York — he in computers, she in special education.“Teaching means everything to us，”Tim would say. In April 1998, he learned he would need a heart operation. It was the kind of news that leads to some serious thinking about life’s purpose.

Not long after the surgery, Tim saw a brochure describing Imagination Library, a program started by Dolly Parton’s foundation (基金会) that mailed a book every month to children from birth to age five in the singer’s hometown of Sevier, Tennessee.“I thought, maybe Linda and I could do something like this when we retire，”Tim recalls. He placed the brochure on his desk，“as a reminder”．

Five years later, now retired and with that brochure still on the desk, Tim clicked on imaginationlibrary. com. The program had been opened up to partners who could take advantage of book and postage discounts.

The quality of the books was of great concern to the Richters. Rather than sign up online, they went to  Dollywood for a look­see.“We didn’t want to give the children rubbish，”says Linda. The books — reviewed each year by teachers, literacy specialists, and Dollywood board members — included classics such as Ezra Jack Keats’s The SnowyDay and newer books like Anna Dewdney’s Llama Llama series.

Satisfied, the couple set up the Richter Family Foundation and got to work. Since 2004, they have shipped more than 12,200 books to preschoolers in their area. Megan Williams, a mother of four, is more than appreciative：“This program introduces us to books I’ve never heard of.”

The Richters spend about $ 400 a month sending books to 200 children.“Some people sit there and wait to die，”says Tim.“Others get as busy as they can in the time they have left.”

D

Next  Thursday,  November 27th ( the  fourth  Thursday  in November), Americans will gather with family and friends to share a big meal to celebrate Thanksgiving.They might play games, tell stories or watch football on television together.

Angelo Rosa has more Thanksgiving memories than most people.From  Drexel   Hill,   Pennsylvania,  the 100­year­old man lives in the same house where he celebrated a great number of Thanksgivings.

But he says it was different when he was a child.Mr Rosa was just three when his family came  to America.“When we were small children, Thanksgiving was never a very big holiday because at the time we actually didn’t pay too much attention to it.” But, also, he says, his parents faced a language difficulty.“They were from Italy and spoke very broken English, because they were the first generation that came over here.”

And the family had little money.There were six Rosa children.Mr Rosa’s father was a coal miner in Pennsylvania.The family was not able to have big, costly dinners, especially during the hard time of the 1930 ’s.But Mr Rosa says Thanksgiving dinners became a tradition in his own family after he married and had children.

This Thanksgiving, Angelo Rosa will go to the home of his daughter about twenty minutes away.He will celebrate the day with loved ones, including his great­grandchildren.

On the other side of the century, Cathie Dahlstrom is preparing dishes for a group of 35 to 40 people in Concord, California.We asked Ms Dahlstrom what she is thankful for  this  year,  her  first  answer  is  “The election”. She said she is also deeply grateful for her very large family.Ms Dahlstrom has one daughter.She has five younger brothers and sisters.She also has eight stepbrothers and stepsisters.Many of them and their families will be at the Thanksgiving dinner.