It doesn’t impress like George Washington’s plantation on the Potomac, but Lincoln’s home in downtown Springfield, Illinois,     1     （prove）irresistible to visitors since it opened to the public. Beautifully restored（修复）to its 1860 appearance, the house was Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s home for 17 years. In 1844 they bought it     2     $1,200 and some land from Charles Dresser, who performed their     3     （marry）ceremony in 1842.

When the house was built, it was much     4     （small）than it is today. Mary’s niece wrote, “The little home     5     （paint）white.” It was sweet and fresh. Mary loved it. She was extremely pretty, and her house was a reflection of     6     （she）, everything in good taste and in perfect order.

Although Mary loved flowers,     7     she nor her husband was known as a gardener. A long- time neighbor said they never planted trees and only kept a garden for one year. Mary’s sister, Frances Todd Wallace, often came over     8     （plant）flowers in the front yard.

    9     Lincolns enlarged the house to a full two-story in 1856 to meet the needs of their growing family. Three of the four Lincoln sons were born here. After Lincoln was elected President of the US in 1861, they rented the house and     10     （sell）most of their furniture.

4 . Leslie Nielsen’s childhood was a difficult one, but he had one particular shining star in his life — his uncle, who was a well-known actor. The admiration and respect his uncle earned inspired Nielsen to make a career (职业) in acting. Even though he often felt he would be discovered to be a no-talent, he moved forward, gaining a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse and making his first television appearance a few years later in 1948. However, becoming a full-time, successful actor would still be an uphill battle for another eight years until he landed a number of film roles that finally got him noticed.

But even then, what he had wasn’t quite what he wanted. Nielsen always felt he should be doing comedy but his good looks and distinguished voice kept him busy in dramatic roles. It wasn’t until 1980 — 32 years into his career — that he landed the role it would seem he was made for in Airplane! That movie led him into the second half of his career where his comedic presence alone could make a movie a financial success even when movie reviewers would not rate it highly.

Did Nielsen then feel content in his career? Yes and no. He was thrilled to be doing the comedy that he always felt he should do, but even during his last few years, he always had a sense of curiosity, wondering what new role or challenge might be just around the comer. He never stopped working, never retired.

Leslie Nielsen’s devotion to acting is wonderfully inspiring. He built a hugely successful career with little more than plain old hard work and determination. He showed us that even a single desire, never given up on, can make for a remarkable life.

5 . Daniel Brush, an astonishing worker in gold, jewels and steel died on November 2022, aged 75. Students from a jewellery school once came to Brush’s studio, a loft in mid-Manhattan, awed to be meeting a figure who, to them, was a worker of miracles.

For 45 years in that loft, he had pursued his calling. His wife Olivia was the only company. He produced hundreds of objects of all sorts, most of them exquisite and many astonishingly small. Rather than use electricity, he laboured alone in a forest of antique machines and when tools frustrated him he made his own, displaying them in cupboards as art in themselves.

Above all else, he worked in gold. His obsession took fire when at 13 he saw an Etruscan gold bowl in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The ancient technique of applying gold beads as fine as sand-grains to a curved gold surface without solder (焊接), was stunning, but so was the lightness of spirit.

He resolved then that he would make such a bowl, and gold became the study of his life. Simply to watch it melt, turn to red-hot and white-hot, then glow purple, was magical. To hold pure gold grain and let it move slowly through his fingers restored his calm of spirit. His chief motivation, he said, was to understand the material and, through that, himself. He wondered why his heart had beaten so fast in the museum that day. Gold in particular had a message for him. His contact with this glorious metal might focus all his attention and help him to hear it.

He developed delicate craftsmanship, with each object virtually a museum piece. For Daniel Brush, he loved the idea that one might take a piece made by Brush out of a pocket, let its beauty pass from mind to mind, and smile. That too was what its maker was after.

6 . At 98, Dick Van Dyke still sings with his group, The Vantastix, and still makes it all look easy. When asked how important it is that he’s having fun when he’s doing it, Van Dyke replied, “My whole career has relied on that. It’s such a blessing to find a way of making a living that you love. I feel so sorry for people who hate their job. I look forward to going to work every morning!”

And some of his work helped define a generation. Take “The Dick Van Dyke Show”; it ran for five years on CBS, and it was such a hit that they’re bringing it back. This week, CBS aired a two-hour tribute (致敬), “Dick Van Dyke, 98 Years of Magic”, and for the occasion, they recreated the original Dick Van Dyke Show” set, down to that well-known sofa.

Early in his career Van Dyke was quoted as saying he only wanted to make films his children could watch. That got the attention of Walt Disney, who promptly cast him in “Mary Poppins”. And his next few films were equally family-friendly, like “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” which happened to have been co-written by James Bond creator Ian Fleming. From then on, Van Dyke was almost always assigned to play the good guy, though he claims to have missed out on a choice part: “Yeah, I could have been James Bond. When Sean Connery left, the producer said, ‘Would you like to be the next Bond?’ I said, ‘Have you heard my British accent?’ That’s a true story!”

It seems that in show biz the true legends never stop. In an interview from 2017 with his friends, Van Dyke described what it was like hitting 90: “People are more afraid of aging than they are of death these days. And I want to say that remain young in heart and there’s a lot of good living to do.”

7 . Born in 1940 in Nyeri, Kenya, Wangari Maathai spent her childhood in the Kenyan countryside and her young adult life in the United States. She studied biology at Mount St. Scholastica College in Kansas, then obtained a master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh. After returning to Kenya and pursuing her PhD at the University of Nairobi, Wangari became the first woman in East Africa to receive a doctor’s degree.

In the 1970s Wangari was an active member of the National Council of Women of Kenya. Women came to the council in part to search for solutions to the environmental problems—deforestation and desertification had caused many of the resources women relied on for food and clean water to decrease.

Fuelled by her knowledge of biology and her passion for helping others, Wangari decided to take action. Wangari had two goals in mind: to help restore environmental resources and give women the ability to support their families in a self-sufficient, sustainable way. To achieve her goals, she came up with a practical but impactful idea: to plant trees. The trees would reduce the effects of deforestation, in addition to providing food and firewood for local families. Wangari’s plan inspired the formation of the Green Belt Movement in 1977, an organisation dedicated to environmental conservation and poverty reduction in Kenya.

As the Green Belt Movement grew, Wangari began to focus on several different but interconnected causes: environmental conservation and human rights. In the late 1980s, she called on her community to oppose the construction of a skyscraper (摩天大楼) in Uhuru Park, Nairobi’s central public space. In 1999 she led a protest against the privatisation of Karura Forest in Nairobi, during which Green Belt Movement members were beaten by private guards. Despite facing ongoing opposition and even danger, Wangari’s belief in her work was never shaken.

Wangari served on the boards of countless environmental organisations, and spoke to members of the United Nations. Due to her tireless work Wangari received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

8 . Very often, it seems that the athletes we watch on TV effortlessly win the game. However, it’s _________ to remember that things don’t always go their way. At one time or another, everyone has a bad game or becomes _________. Here two top athletes tell us about a time when they had to _________ back and what they _________ from the experience.

Maya Moore was a member of the U.S. women’s basketball team that won gold at the Olympics in 2012, “My team was playing at the national championships when I was 13. I could not hit a _________ during the whole game. We _________ and I felt like I let my team down. I was extremely _________. My mom helped me see that my _________ does not define who I am. She helped me realize that it is how I respond to difficult times that _________. I learned to bounce back from __________ times in life.”

Swimmer Natalie Coughlin has ever won 12 Olympic gold medals. “By the time I was 16, I had already worked for years to __________ for the Olympic team. __________, I tore a muscle in my shoulder, which meant I had to temporarily __________ my goal. It made me hardly wish to __________ because swimming was my whole world. The injury __________ me to seek things outside of swimming, like friendships and hobbies. It helped me realize that swimming was not life and death.”