I was 14 when Mr. Ingram hired me as a farmhand. It was the first time I was actually      for work. One day Mr. Ingram found an old truck that was      in the soft,sandy soil of our field. It was full of melons that someone had tried to      from our farm before his truck got caught in the mud.
Mr. Ingram explained that the truck’s owner would be       soon, and he wanted me to watch and learn. It wasn’t long       a local guy with a terrible reputation for fighting and stealing showed up with his two fully-grown sons. They looked really       .
Calmly Mr. Ingram said, “Well, I see you want to       some watermelons from us.”
There was a long       before the man answered, “Yeah, I guess so. What are you       for them?”
“Twenty-five cents each.”
“Well, I suppose that would be       enough if you help me get my truck out of here,” the man said.
It turned out to be our biggest sale of the summer, and an awful, perhaps violent incident had been      . After they left, Mr. Ingram smiled and said to me, “Son, if you don’t forgive your    , you’re going to run out of friends.”

It happened towards evening, when I was resting in a cafe. I      a pair of newly bought white leather shoes, which were rather expensive. Then    came to me.
He was in an unfit shirt,     pale and weak. He looked about eleven or twelve. No sooner     begun to speak than he opened the box in his hand and took out the tools of shoe-polishing. He bent down,         my leather shoes, and began to shine them.
He was concentrating on his job when heavy rain began to pour     . People rushed into the cafe for protection from the     . More and more people crowded in and gradually     the boy from me.
Hours passed, and     turned dark. I had no shoes on my feet and wondered       the boy had been. I thought he would not      my leather shoes, and I would have to walk back home on      in the night.
When it was near midnight the rain      , people started to go out. The cafe      closed. I had to move to the door. I was surprised to see the boy sleeping on the floor with his head leaning      a box. He held a package made of his shirt tightly in his arms.
I      him slightly and woke him up. He jumped up and rubbed his eyes for a while before he      me. Then he opened the      hurriedly, gave me my leather shoes, and apologized to me shyly.
I paid him and wrapped around him his unfit shirt, which     my leather shoes. After saying goodbye to the boy, I was    home, with the image of the boy stay in my mind.

Bill White’s father is a lawyer. In his      time, he likes to get out in the country and take some     of animals.
For a long time, Bill had wanted to go with his father on one of his      . But his father didn’t take Bill along with him    he was fifteen.
He and Bill drove to the farm which      to his uncle in the afternoon. They    the night there, so that they could     out early the next morning. Uncle Steve and his son Larry, who was sixteen, were going to go out with them.
It was still dark when Bill heard the alarm      the next morning. He wondered why it was running so early. He couldn’t remember    he was. He turned over      and looked at the clock. It was 5 o’clock. Then he    that he was at the    and that he was going out to take pictures with his father. He jumped out of bed and got     quickly.
He ran downstairs. The others were already in the    . Uncle Steve was cooking bacon and eggs. There was a pot of coffee on the stove. It    good.
They ate breakfast quickly. They didn’t talk    , because they didn’t want to    up the other people in the house. They filled a thermos bottle    hot coffee and took some sandwiches    Aunt Grace, Uncle Steve’s wife, had made for them. They gathered their camera    and started out.

A strange thing happened to me last Sunday．It was such a beautiful day that I drove to go for a look in the country．?
On the way back     , my car stopped．It was      gas on a lonely road far from a town．I decided to walk    I found someone who could      ome gas．
I had walked almost a mile       I finally found a house near the road．I was glad to see it,        it was getting dark．?
I knocked at the door and a little old lady    long white hair answered．She said,
“I      waiting for you for a long time．Come in．    is almost ready．”“But I only come      some gas,”I answered．I couldn’t imagine      she was talking about．“Oh, Alfred! Gas? You used to like tea．”?
I quickly explained that my car was out of gas,       she didn’t seem to hear me．She just      calling me Alfred and talking about how long      since she had seen me．She was acting very strangely and I was anxious to       ．    she went to get tea, I went out of the house as fast as I could．?
Fortunately, there was another house down the road and I was able to buy the gas I needed．When I told the man about my       he said,“Oh, that’s Miss Emily．She lives    herself in that big house．She’s out of her mind, but she wouldn’t hurt      ．She is still waiting for the man she was supposed to marry thirty years ago．The day before their wedding he left home and      came back because of the war．”

Like most people, I was brought up to look upon life as a process of getting. It was not until in my late thirties that I made this important     : giving-away makes life so much more exciting. You needn’t worry if you       money.
This is how I     with giving-away. If an idea for improving the window display of a neighborhood store     in my mind, I step in and make the     to the storekeeper. If an accident takes place, the     of which I think the local police could use, I     him up and tell him about it, though I am not in    here. I found a rule about this world is to give     getting something back, though the    often comes in an unexpected form.
One Sunday morning the local post office delivered an important special letter to my home, though it was     to me at my office. I wrote the postmaster a note of     . More than a year later I needed a post-office box for a new business I was     . I was told at the window that there were     boxes left, and that my name would have to go on a long     list. As I was about to be      , the postmaster appeared in the    . “Wasn’t it you that wrote us that letter a year ago about delivering an      delivery to your home?” I said it was. “Well, you certainly are going to have a box in this post office     we make one specifically for you. You don’t know what a letter like that means to us. We usually get     but complaints.”

Back in the 15th century, in a tiny village in Germany, lived a family with eighteen children. Eighteen! In order       to keep food on file table, the father, a goldsmith（金匠）by      , worked almost eighteen hours a day at his trade. Despite their seemingly       condition, two of the eldest children had a dream. They both wanted to pursue their talent for art,       they knew well that their father would never be able to       either of them to study at the Academy.
After many long discussions at night in their       bed, the two boys finally worked out an agreement. They would toss（擲）a coin. The       would go down into the nearby mines and, with his earnings,       his winning brother for the academy. Then, in four years, he would support the other one. Then Albrecht Durer won the toss and       to Nuremberg. Albert went down into the dangerous mines and, for the next four years,       his brother, whose work at the academy was almost an immediate sensation（轟動(dòng)）- By the time he graduated, he was beginning to       considerable fees for himself.
When the young artist       home and said to his brother, “And now, Albert, blessed brother of mine, now it is your      . Now you can go to the Academy to pursue your dream, and I will       you. ”Albert rose and wiped tile       from his cheeks. “No, brother. I cannot go to Nuremberg. It is too       for me. Look…look what four years in the mines have done to my      ! I cannot even hold a glass, much less make delicate lines on canvas （畫布）  __    a pen or a brush.”
More than 450 years have      . By now, among Albrecht Durer’s hundreds of masterful portraits, “The Praying Hands” is one       creation that can catch the world’s hearts.

My nephew's 10-year-old son came for a visit one hot，July weekend. I persuaded him to　 inside and joined him in a game. After　 for an hour, I suggested that we relax for a while. I fell into my favorite recliner（躺椅）to let my neck muscles relax. He'd slipped out of the room and I was catching a few enjoyable moments of peace and quiet.
"Look，Alice，”he said　 as he ran over to the chair where I was sitting"I found a kite. Could we go outside and 　 it?"
Glancing out a nearby window, I noticed it was　 outside.“I'm sorry, Tripper,.” I said, sad to see his 　 eyes. "The wind is not blowing today. The kite won't fly.”
The　 10-year-old replied,“I think it's windy enough. I can get it to fly,”he answered as he ran out to the back door 　 Up and down in the yard he ran, pulling the kite 　 to a small length of string. He ran back and forth，as hard as his ten year-old legs would carry him, looking back　 at the kite behind. After about ten minutes of unsuccessful determination, he came back in.
I asked, "How did it go?"
"Fine，”he said, not wanting to admit 　 ．“I got it to fly some”
As he walked past me to return the kite to the closet shelf, I heard him say under his breath, "I guess I'll have to wait for the　 ．”
At that moment I heard another Voice speak to my 　 . "Alice, sometimes you are just like that. You want to do it your way instead of waiting for the Wind.，，
And the voice was right. We usually want to use our own efforts to 　 what we want to do. We wait for the Wind only after we have done all we can and have exhausted（耗盡） our own　  ．We must learn how to rely on Him in the first place!

A lesson of life
" Everything happens for the best, "  my mother said whenever I faced disappointment. "If you can carry on, one day something      will happen. And you'll     that it wouldn't have happened if not for that previous disappointment. "
After graduating from college, I       that mother was right. I had decided to try for a job in radio, then work my way up to sports announcer. I travelled to Chicago by getting        rides from drivers of passing cars and knocked on the door of every station-and got turned      every time.
In one studio, a kind lady told me that big stations couldn't     hiring inexperienced person-"Go out in the countryside and find a small station that'll give you a        , " she said.
I returned home to Dixon, Illinois. While there was no radio-announcing jobs in Dixon, my father said Montgomery Ward had opened a store and wanted a      athlete to manage its sports department. Since Dixon was where I had played high school football, I      .  The job sounded just       for me. But I wasn't      .
My      must have shown. "Everything happens for the best," Mom      me. Dad      me the car to job hunt. I tried WOC Radio in Davenport, Iowa. The program director, a wonderful Scotsman named Peter MacArthur, told me they had already hired an announcer.
As I left his office,  I felt extremely       .I asked       ,  " How can a fellow get to be a sport announcer if he can't get a job in a radio station?"
I was waiting for the elevator         I heard MacArthur calling,  " What was that you said about sports? Do you know anything about football?" Then he stood me       a microphone (麥克風(fēng)) and asked me to broadcast an      game.
On my way home, as I have many times since,  I thought of my mother's words: " Keep on trying until some day you succeed. Something wouldn't have happened if not for that previous failure. " I often wonder what       my life might have taken if I'd got the job at Montgomery

Michel is a young girl who works for the police     a handwriting expert (專家). She has helped      many criminals (罪犯) by using her special talents (天才).
When she was fourteen, Michel was already     interested in the differences in her friends'      that she would spend hours     them. After      college she went to France for a       two-year class in handwriting at the School of Police Science.
　　Michel says that it is     for people to hide their handwriting. She can        of what she needs to know simply      looking at the writing with her own eyes,    she also has machines     help her make     different kinds of paper and ink. This knowledge is often        great help to the police.
Michel believes that handwriting is a good    of what kind of person the      is. "I wouldn't go out with a fellow        I didn't like his handwriting.” She says. But she    she fell in love with her future husband, a young policeman        she studied his handwriting. It is later proved to be       , however.

閱讀下面短文，從短文后所給各題的四個(gè)選項(xiàng)(A、B、C和D)中，選出可以填入
空白處的最佳選項(xiàng)，并在答題卡上將該項(xiàng)涂黑。
A wealthy man and his son loved to collect rare works of art. They had a large      , from Picasso to Van Gogh. They would often sit together and       the paintings of great artists. When the Vietnam conflict      , the son went to war.       he died in battle while rescuing another soldier. The father was in deep      .
A month later, a young man came with a large       in his hands. He said, “Sir, I am the soldier for whom your son       his life. He often talked about your love for      . So please accept it as a gift.” The father opened the package and saw a       of his son. The father was so drawn to the picture that his eyes welled up with tears.
A few months later, the wealthy man died. There was to be a great auction (拍賣) of his
    . Many people gathered,       over having an opportunity to       one painting. The auctioneer said, “We will start the bidding (競(jìng)拍) with this picture of the son. Who will bid for it?” There was      . Then a voice shouted, “We want to see the famous paintings. Just
     it.” “The son! Who’ll take the son?” the auctioneer continued.
Finally, a       came from the very back. It was the gardener of the old man. “I’m poor and can only       $10 for that.” The auctioneer asked the crowd to bid more.      , they still kept silent. So he pounded the gavel (小錘). “SOLD for $10!” A man shouted, “Go on with the collection!” The auctioneer said, “I’m sorry, the auction is      . According to       will, only the picture of the son would be auctioned. Whoever bought that picture would be     with all of the possessions, including the paintings.”