Driving to a friend’s house on a recent evening, I was struck by the sight of the full moon rising just above my friend’s rooftops, huge and round, yellow through the dust and smoke of the city. I stopped to watch it for a few moments, thinking what a pity it was that most city livers---myself included---usually miss sights like this because we spend most of our lives indoors.
My friend had also seen it. He grew up living in a forest in Europe, and the moon meant a lot to him then. It had touched much of his life.
I know the feeling. Last December I took my seven-year-old daughter to the mountainous jungle of northern India with some friends. We stayed in a forest rest house with no electricity or hot water. Our group had campfires outside every night, and indoors when it was too cold outside. The moon grew to its fullest during our trip. Between me and the high mountains lay three or four valleys. Not a light shone in them and not a sound could be heard. It was one of the quietest places I have ever known, a bottomless well of silence. And above me was the full moon.
Today our lives are connected with glass, metal, plastic and fiber-glass. We eat and breathe things our bodies were not designed to process. We have televisions, cell phones, pagers, electricity, heaters, air-conditioners, cars and computers. White noise and pollution is in the air. Radio waves and strange lights are constantly disturbing our minds and bodies.
Struggling through traffic that evening at the end of a tiring day, most of it spent indoors, I saw the moon and remembered these things. And I thought: before long, I would like to live in a small cottage. There I will grow vegetables and read books and walk in the mountains and perhaps write. I may grow old there. But I will be able to walk outside on a cold silent night and touch the moon.
【小題1】What was the author’s pity in this passage?

We were on our way home from Houston one Saturday morning. We decided to stop at a local gas station to get coffee and something to snack on since it was a good hour and a half before we got home.
When we were done, we got back into our car and before I started it, we noticed a man standing outside in front of the building. He was a homeless man with worn clothes and it looked like he had gone in and gotten himself some coffee or something warm to drink since it was cold this time of the year. He must have not had enough money to get something to eat.
Then a dog walked up to the front of the building. I could tell she was a “she”, because you could tell that she had baby dogs. She was terribly in need of something to eat and I felt so bad for her. I knew if she didn’t eat soon, she and her baby dogs would not make it.
I and my wife sat there and looked at her. We noticed that people walked by and didn’t even pet her, like most people do when they walk by an animal in front of a store. We still did not do anything. But the homeless man, who I thought did not buy himself anything to eat, went back into the store. And what he did brought tears to me and my wife. He had gone into the store and with what money he may have had, bought a can of dog food and fed that dog.
This story plays a great part in our lives. You see, that was Mother’s Day weekend. And a lot of people forget that some animals are parents too.
It took a homeless man, to show me what I should have done. He make me a better man that day.
【小題1】 The homeless man only had something to drink because _______.

A traveler hurried down to the hall of an American hotel and went to the cash-desk. He had just 15 minutes to pay his bill and get to the station. Suddenly he remembered that he had left something in his room.
"Look here, boy," he said to the bellboy, "run up to my room and see if I have left a parcel on the table there. Be quick about it."
The boy ran upstairs. Five minutes passed. The traveler was walking up and down the hall, looking very angry. At last the boy appeared.
"Yes, sir," he reported to the traveler," you have left the parcel there, it's right on the table in your room."
【小題1】 The traveler _______.

Mark Twain left school when he was twelve. Though he had little school education, he became the most famous writer of his time. He made millions of dollars by writing. His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clements, but he is better known all over the world as Mark Twain, his penname.
Mark Twain was born in 1835 and he was not a healthy baby. In fact, he was not expected to live through the first winter. But with his mother’s tender care, he managed to survive. As a boy, he caused much trouble to his parents. He used to play jokes on all his friends and neighbors. He didn’t like to go to school, and he ran away from home from time to time. He always went in the direction of the nearby Mississippi. He was nearly drowned(淹死) nine times.
After his father’s death in 1847, Mark Twain began to work for a printer, who only provided him with food and clothing. Then, he worked as a river-boat pilot and later joined the army. But shortly after that he became a miner, during this period, he started to write short stories.  Afterwards he became a full-time writer.
In 1870, Mark Twain got married. In the years that followed he wrote many books including Tom Sawyer in 1876, and Huckleberry Finn in 1884, which made him famous, and brought him a great fortune（財富）.Unfortunately, Mark Twain got into debts in bad investments（投資） and he had to write large numbers of stories to pay these debts. In 1904, his wife died and then three of their children passed away.
He died on April 21, 1910 at the age of 70.
【小題1】Mark Twain was ________ in his childhood.    

A traveler hurried down to the hall of an American hotel and went to the cash-desk. He had just 15 minutes to pay his bill and get to the station. Suddenly he remembered that he had left something in his room.
"Look here, boy," he said to the bellboy, "run up to my room and see if I have left a parcel on the table there. Be quick about it."
The boy ran upstairs. Five minutes passed. The traveler was walking up and down the hall, looking very angry. At last the boy appeared.
"Yes, sir," he reported to the traveler," you have left the parcel there, it's right on the table in your room."
【小題1】 The traveler _______.

I shall never forget the night, a few years ago, when Marion J. Douglas was a student in one of my adult-education classes. He told us how tragedy had struck at his home, not once, but twice. The first time he had lost his five-year-old daughter. He and his wife thought they couldn’t bear that first loss; but, as he said, “Ten months later, God gave us another little girl and she died in five days.”
This double bereavement was almost too much to bear. “I couldn’t take it,” this father told us. “I couldn’t sleep, eat, rest or relax. My nerves were entirely shaken and my confidence gone.” At last he went to the doctors: one recommended sleeping pills and another recommended a trip, but neither helped. He said, “My body felt as if it was surrounded in a vice(大鉗子), and the jaws of the vice were being drawn tighter and tighter.” The tension of grief(悲傷) --- if you have ever been paralyzed(使癱瘓) by sorrow, you know what the meant.
“But thank God, I had one child left --- a four-year-old son. He gave me the solution to the problem. One afternoon as I sat around feeling sorry for myself, he asked, ‘Daddy, will you build a boat for me?’ I was in no mood to build a boat; in fact, I was in no mood to do anything. But my son is a persistent fellow! I had to give in. Building that toy boat took me about three hours. By the time it was finished, I realized that those three hours spent building that boat were first hours of mental relaxation and peace that I had had in months! I realized that it is difficult to worry while you are busy doing something that requires planning and thinking. In my case, building the boat had knocked worry out of the ring. So I determined to keep busy.”
“The following night, I made a list of jobs that ought to be done. Scores of items needed to be repaired. Amazingly, I had made a list of 242 items that needed attention. During the last two years I have completed most of them. I am so busy now that I have no time for worry.”
No time for worry! That is exactly what Winston Churchill said when he was working eighteen hours a day at the height of the war. When he was asked if he worried about his huge responsibilities, he said, “I am too busy. I have no time for worry.”
【小題1】 The underlined word “bereavement” in the second paragraph refers to _________.