The boy returned—sick, cold and hungry. He was not surprised to find his parents waiting for him at the harbour, both looking very worried. While his father started scolding him, his mother hugged and said, “My boy, you are home. Everything is all right!”

The next morning ,the boy returned to school after much persuasion（说服） from his mother as he was afraid he would be punished .He went into the classroom five minutes before school began and quite unexpectedly, he found his classmates clapping their hands, giving him a hero’s welcome. They asked him a lot of questions as well. During the break, the headmaster sent for him. Trembling, he knocked at the headmaster’s door. “Come in,” a serious voice said. The boy entered the headmaster’s office. He was afraid that the headmaster would soon tell him about the punishment. But what he heard was a question from the headmaster: “Playing truant（逃学） for the first time, Tim? It would be interesting if you could give a talk to the whole school about your experiences abroad, wouldn’t it?”

A teacher in New York decided to honor each of her seniors in high school by telling them the difference they each made. She called each student to the front of the class, one at atime. First she told them how the student made a difference to her and the class. Then she presented each of them with a blue ribbon imprinted with gold letters which read, “Who I Am Makes a Difference.”

Afterwards the teacher told the students to do a class project to see what kind of impact recognition would have on a community. She gave each of the students three more ribbons and instructed them to go out and spread this acknowledgement ceremony.

One of the boys in the class went to a junior manager in a nearby company and honored him for helping him with his career planning. He gave him a blue ribbon and put it on his shirt. Then he gave him two extra ribbons, and told him what it was all about.

Later that day the junior manager went in to see his boss, who had been noted, by the way, as being kind of a bad-tempered fellow. He sat his boss down and he told him that he deeply admired him for being a creative genius. The boss seemed very surprised. The junior manager asked him if he would accept the gift of the blue ribbon and give him permission to put it on him. His surprised boss said, “Well, sure.”

The junior manager took the blue ribbon and placed it right on his boss’s jacket above his heart. Then he gave him the last extra ribbon, and repeated what the boy had told him.

That night the boss came home to his 14-year-old son and sat him down. He said, “The most incredible thing happened to me today. I was in my office when one of the junior managers came in and told me he admired me and gave me a blue ribbon for being a creative genius. Then he put this blue ribbon that says ‘Who I Am Makes A Difference’ on my jacket. He gave me an extra ribbon and asked me to find somebody else to honor. As I was driving home tonight, I started thinking about whom I would honor with this ribbon and I thought about you. I want to honor you.”

“I’m really busy around all day and when I come home I don’t pay a lot of attention to you and sometimes I scream at you, but somehow tonight, I just want to sit here and well, just let you know that you do make a difference to me. You’re a great kid and I love you!”

The startled boy started to sob and sob, and he couldn’t stop crying. He looked up at his father and said through his tears, “I was planning on committing suicide tomorrow, Dad, because I didn’t think you loved me. Now I don’t need to.”

One day a few years ago, a very funny thing happened to a neighbor of mine. He is a teacher at one of London’s big medical schools. He had finished his teaching for the summer term and was at the airport on his way to Russia to give a lecture.

    He had put a few clothes and his lecture notes in his shoulder bag, and he had put Rupert, the skeleton(人体骨架) to be used in his lecture, in a large brown suitcase. At the airport desk, he suddenly thought that he had forgotten to buy a newspaper. He left his suitcase near the desk and went over to the shop.

    When he got back, he discovered that someone had taken his suitcase by mistake. He often wondered what they said when they got home and found Rupert.

While some kids don’t always like what Mom or Dad is cooking for dinner, they don’t have to worry about where to find their next meal. Elizabeth Murray grew up with drug-addicted parents and often didn’t have warm clothes or food. “It would be common for me to go into my kitchen and see my parents shooting drugs into their veins,” Elizabeth said.

When Elizabeth was 10 she found out her mother had AIDS.A few years later, while most teenage girls were worrying about what to wear, Elizabeth was looking after her mom. Her mom died at the age of 41 in 1996.

At 15 Elizabeth was homeless. Her mom was gone and her dad was on the street. After her mom’s death, she knew things had to change and she knew it was up to herself . “I connected the lifestyles that I had witnessed every day with how my mother ended and wondered if there was anything I could do about it that would not happen to me. So I went back to school. But mind you, I was homeless,” explained Elizabeth.

Her high school didn’t know Elizabeth was homeless. She took an extra load of work, studied on the stairs and made excellent grades. When she read about a scholarship offered by The New York Times she quickly applied and won. She would receive $12,000 for every year at college. Elizabeth was determined to go to Harvard and the university didn’t turn her down. Right now Elizabeth lives with her little sister in New York while she waits to become a full-time student. She’s working at The New York Times right now and they offered her work for the summer. Elizabeth has gone from homeless to Harvard.

D

Daniel Boone was born in the United States in 1734. He came from a poor family that lived in a small village near a forest. His father didn’t have enough money to send Daniel to school so he never learned to read. However, Daniel learned a lot of things from the stories he heard about the forest and the things around him. He was attracted to the simple and quiet life of the forest and preferred to live there instead of living on his father’s farm.

When Daniel grew up he tried to live on the farm but he wasn’t happy there. After a year or so he decided to travel to the unexplored lands to the west. He learned and experienced many things during his travels. After two years he returned to his home and shared his knowledge and stories with the people, which made him famous for his travels.

Once while traveling Daniel was captured (taken away) by the Native Americans (Indians). They liked him very much and soon became his friends. Daniel Boone continued to travel throughout his life. He died at the age of 86. he had led a very interesting life and became well known in American history as one of the country’s most famous explorers and pioneers.

Insurance companies provide a service to the community by protecting it against expected and unexpected disasters. Before an insurance company agrees to insure anything, it collects accurate figures about the risk. It knows, for example, that the risk of a man being killed in a plane accident is less than the risk he takes in crossing a busy road. This enables it to quote (报价) low figures for travel insurance. Sometimes the risk may be high, as in motor-racing or mountaineering. Then the company charges a much higher price. If too many climbers have accidents, the price rises further. If the majority of climbers fall off mountains, the company will refuse to insure them.

    An ordinary householder may wish to protect his home against fire or his property against burglary. A shopkeeper may wish to insure against theft. In normal cases, the company will check its statistics and quote a premium (保险费). If it is suspicious, it may refuse to quote. If it insures a shop and then receives a suspicious claim, it will investigate the claim as a means of protecting itself against false claims. It is not unknown for a businessman in debt to burn down his own premises so that he can claim much money from his insurance company. He can be sure that the fire will be investigated most carefully. Insurance companies also accept insurance against shipwreck or disaster in the air. Planes and ships are very expensive, so a large premium is charged, but a reduction is given to companies with an accident-free record.

    Every week, insurance companies receive premium payments from customers. These payments can form a very large total running into millions of dollars. The company does not leave the money in the bank. It invests in property, shares, farms and even paintings and stamps. Its aim is to obtain the best possible return on its investment. This is not as greedy as it may seem since this is one way by which it can keep its premiums down and continue to make a profit while being of service to the community.

C

Hundreds of people marched through England’s historic university city Oxford last weekend. They showed their support for a medical laboratory that has been targeted(把…作为目标)  by animal rights activists. It was the first big demonstration by supporters of the centre, which researched on illnesses including cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Members of the newly-formed group Pro-Test said they represented the “silent majority”. They are convinced that research is critical to making advances against diseases that kill millions of people.

Around 700 people joined Saturday’s march, while more than 200 animal rights protesters held a separate demonstration nearby. Lillian Buckner, among the animal rights protesters, said the suffering of animals used for medical research “is similar to what it was in the concentration camps”.

The Oxford University laboratory under construction has been at the centre of debate for a year and a half. Work on the building was stopped in July 2014, when construction company Montpellier pulled out. That was after its shareholders received threatening letters from animal rights activists. Construction has been restarted, and Oxford says the facility will be completed with tight security.

Intimidation(胁迫) and violence have shut down businesses that provide animals for experiments, and slowed down institutions that conduct animal testing. Last year Cambridge University gave up plans to build Europe’s largest primate(灵长类的动物) research laboratory. That’s because of spiraling(急剧上涨的) costs, including the expense of protecting the centre from activists.

Last week, two Oxford academics publicly spoke in favor of the building of the lab. They are Professor Tipu Aziz and Professor John Stein. “I feel passionately that animal experiments have benefited mankind greatly,” said Stein. “Almost all of the medical advances of the last 100 years have happened through animal experiments. People just don’t seem to know this and it hasn’t got across.

      Rome had the Forum (论坛). London has Speaker’s Corner. Now always-on-the-go New Yorkers have Liz and Bill.

      Liz and Bill, two college graduates in their early 20s, have spent a whole year talking to thousands of people in subway stations and on busy street comers. And just talk.

       They don’t collect money. They don’t push religion (宗教). So what’s the point?

     “ To see what happens,” said Liz. “ We simply enjoy life with open talk.”

      Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks（袭击）, they decided to walk from New York City to Washington, a 270-mile trip. They found they loved talking to people along the way and wanted to continue talking with strangers after their return.

     “ It started as a crazy idea.” Liz said. “ We were so curious（好奇的）about all the strangers walking by with their life stories. People will talk to us about anything: their job, their clothes, their childhood experiences, anything.”

      To celebrate a year of talking, the two held a get-together（聚会）in a city park for all the people they had met over the past year. A few hundred people appeared, as well as some television cameramen and reporters.

     They may plan more parties or try to attract more people to join their informal talks. Some publishers have expressed interest in a book, something the two say they’ll consider（考虑）before making a decision.

Even at school there had been an unhealthy competition between George and Richard.

“I’ll be the first millionaire in Coleford!” Richard used to boast.

“And you’ll be sorry that you knew me,” George would reply “because I’ll surely be the best lawyer in our town!”

After graduation, George never became a lawyer and Richard was anybody but a millionaire …. Instead, it happened that both men opened bookshops on opposite sides of Coleford High Street, while it was hard to make much money from books then, which made the competition between them worse. Eventually, Richard closed down his, dreaming of making a fortune elsewhere. 

Now, with only one bookshop in the town, business was better for George. But sometimes he sat in his narrow old kitchen and gazed out of the dirty window, thinking about his former rival(竞争对手)。Perhaps he missed him? 

George was very interested in old dictionaries, and he had recently found a collector in Australia who was selling a rare first edition. When the parcel arrived, the book was in perfect condition and George was quite delighted. But while he was having lunch, George glanced at the photo in the newspaper that the book had been wrapped in. He was astonished — the smiling face was older than he remembered but unmistakable! Trembling, George started reading: “Bookends Company has bought ten bookstores from its competitors. The company, owned by multi-millionaire Richard Pike, is now the largest bookseller in this country.”

C

      Every week in China, millions of people will sit in front of their TVs watching teenagers compete for the title Character Hero, which is a Chinese-style spelling bee(拼写大赛). In this challenge, young competitors must write Chinese characters by hand. To prepare for the competition, the competitors usually spend months studying dictionaries.

        Perhaps the show’s popularity should not be a surprise. Along with gunpowder(火药) and paper, many Chinese people consider the creation of Chinese calligraphy(书法)to be one of their primary contributions to civilization（文明）. Unfortunately, all over the country, Chinese people are forgetting how to write their own language without computerized help. Software on smart phones and computers allows users to type in the basic sound of the word using the Latin alphabet（拉丁字母表）. The correct character is chosen from a list. The result? It’s possible to recognize characters without remembering how to write them.

       But there’s still hope for the paint brush. China’s Education Ministry wants children to spend more time learning how to write.

        In one Beijing primary school we visited, students practice calligraphy every day inside a specially decorated classroom with traditional Chinese paintings hanging on the walls. Soft music plays as a group of six-year-olds dip brush pens into black ink. They look up at the blackboard often to study their teacher’s examples before carefully attempting to reproduce those characters on thin rice paper. “If adults can survive without using handwriting, why bother to teach it now?” we ask the calligraphy teacher, Shen Bin. “The ability to write characters is part of Chinese tradition and culture,” she reasons. “Students must learn now so they don’t forget when they grow up.” says the teacher.