【推荐3】A pair of silk stockings

Little Missus Sommers one day found that she had already saved fifty dollars. It seemed to her a very large amount of money.

The question of investment was one she _______ carefully. A dollar or two could be _______ to the price she usually paid for her daughter Janie’s shoes. This would guarantee they would _______ a great deal longer than usual. She would buy cloth for new shirts for the boys. And still there would be enough left for new stockings — two pairs per child. What time that would save her in always _______ old stockings!

But that day she was tired and a little bit weak. Between getting the children fed and the house cleaned, and preparing herself to go shopping, she had _______ to eat at all!

When she arrived at the large department store, she sat in front of an empty counter. She was trying to gather _______ and courage to push through a mass of busy _______. She rested her hand upon the counter.

She wore no gloves. She slowly grew aware that her hand had felt something very _______ to touch. She looked down to see that her hand lay upon a pile of silk _______. A young salesgirl who stood behind the __________ asked her if she wished to __________ the silky leg coverings.

She smiled as if she had been asked to inspect diamond jewelry with the aim of __________ it. But she went on feeling the soft, __________ items. Now she used both hands, holding the stockings up to see the light shine __________ them.

Two red marks suddenly showed on her pale face.

She thought to herself, “Why not live for myself once?”

She looked up at the salesgirl. “Well, I will __________ this pair.” she said.

Missus Sommers then walked into the ladies’ rest area. In an empty corner, she __________ her cotton stockings with the new silk ones.

For the first time she seemed to be taking a __________ from the tiring act of considering her family. She had let herself be __________ by some machine — like force directing her actions. But this time she decided to free herself of __________.

Then she put her shoes back on and put her old stockings into her bag. Next, she went to the shoe department, sat down and waited to be __________.

【推荐1】Inspiration can be a strange thing. You never know when it might ________. And sometimes, it can come from the most ________ places.

I recently read about an author named Nnedi Okorafor. When she was in college, she had a serious spinal disorder（脊椎病）. Okorafor was told that a simple operation could ________ it. But when she woke up, she found that she couldn't move her legs and was in great pain.

Before she got well, she saw strange things in her hospital room. She imagined her ________ as a beast（野兽）that hunted her from the shadows. But she also ________ a woman-a woman who could fly, inspired her and helped her ________ her pain. "I felt myself become ________," she wrote in her book Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected.

We ________ know where we might find the inspiration to create. As a musician, most of my inspiration comes from other people's music. But I also find ________ in other places. Books, movies and ________ just moments in everyday life can lead to new creations.

________, I recently rewatched the film Blade Runner. I've seen it plenty of times before. But this time, for some reason, I saw it ________. I decided to make music that could create the same feeling as the film, which is heavily ________ by the movie's setting and characters.

Anything can ________ us. You just have to be ________ to catch inspiration when it hits.

【推荐3】I was standing in the checkout line behind a woman who looked to be in her 60s. When it was her _______ to pay, the cashier greeted her by name and asked her how she was _______. The woman looked down and said, “Not so _______. My husband just lost his _______ and my son is up to his old tricks again. I don’t know how I’m going to _______ the holidays.” Then she gave the cashier food stareps.

My heart _______. I wanted to help but didn’t know how. As I walked into the parking lot. I_______ the woman returning her shopping cart, and I remembered something in my _______ that I could help her in a different but _______ way. It wasn’t a handful of cash or a   ____________ on a job for her husband, but maybe — it would make her life ____________.

“Excuse me,” I said, my voice trembling a bit, “I couldn’t help overhearing what you said to the ____________. It sounds like you’re going through a really ____________ time right now. I’m so sorry. I’d like to give you something.”

And I took a business-sized card out of my purse and ____________ it to her. When the woman read the card’s only two words, she began to cry. And through her tears, she said ____________. “You have no idea how much this ____________ to me.” The words on the card. You Matter.

A few weeks earlier, a colleague gave me the same card as ____________ for a project I was working on. When I read the card, I felt a warm glow ____________ inside of me. Deeply touched. I came home and ____________ my own box of You Matter cards and started ____________ them too.

【推荐1】Long long time ago, in a small and distant _________, there was a place known _________ the House of 1000 Mirrors. A small, happy little dog learned of this place and _________ to visit it. When he arrived, he _________ happily up the stairs to the doorway of the house. He looked through the doorway with his ears lifted high and his tail _________ as fast as it could. To his great _________, he found himself staring at 1000 other _________ little dogs with their tails wagging (摇摆) just as fast as his. He smiled a great smile, and was _________ with 1000 great smiles just as warm and friendly. As he _________ the House, he thought to himself, “This is a __________ place. I will come back and visit it often.”

In the same village, __________ little dog, who was not quite as happy as the first one, was determined to visit the house. He __________ climbed the stairs and __________ his head as he looked into the door. __________ he saw the 1000 unfriendly looking dogs staring back at him, he growled (怒吼) at them and was __________ to see 1000 little dogs growling back at him. As he left, he thought to himself, “That is a terrible place, and I will __________ go back there again.”

All the faces in the world are __________. When you smile at the world, the whole world will __________ at you, and vice verse (反之亦然). __________, it is you who can choose to be happy or to be upset. And what kinds of reflections (思考) do you see in the __________ of the people you meet?

【推荐2】An English padre wanted to become a member of a certain club in Africa. In order to become a member, each person had to_______at least one lion. The padre had never shot an animal for his life. So, armed with a rifle and led by a young African boy, the padre set out one evening for a pool in the jungle where he was told a lion came each evening to_______. He waited patiently for a few_______until shortly before midnight when he heard a rustling (沙沙声) noise. Sure enough a few feet away the head of the lion appeared above a bush that separated the padre and the pool. He aimed and fired. The head of the lion_______fell behind the bush but a moment later _______. So the padre aimed and_______again. The head of the lion fell behind the bush and once more reappeared. The padre fired again: the same_______. He remained calm because he_______he had brought sixteen bullets with him. After his fourth try, his aim seemed to become more and more_______: in fact, after his________ try the African boy had to________him: “This is your last chance. If you________this time, we are in trouble.” The padre then realized how________the situation was, so he took a deep breath, aimed very carefully and fired. They waited for a moment, and then slowly________up to twenty: the head of the lion did not reappear. The padre was certain that at last he had shot his lion. They________forward together to the spot behind the bush. And what do you think they found? Sixteen lions!

【推荐3】In mid-January, Jacky Hunt-Broersma, a native of South Africa, set her goal of running. And since then she has been running 26. 2 miles every day, about the _______ of a marathon. On Saturday, she completed her 104th marathon — a (n) _______ she expects to be confirmed by Guinness World Records. If so, she would then hold a world record for 104 back-to-back (连续的) marathon runs, two more than her previous _______.

Hunt-Broersma lost half of her left leg _______ a rare form of cancer in 2001. “The biggest ______ was accepting that part of my body was gone,” she said. “Until five years ago, I was not very _______. But after looking into running, I decided to give it a try.” Currently, she keeps running on a false leg made out of carbon fiber. The carbon fiber blade (刀锋) she uses, designed specifically for running, costs about $10,000.

But Hunt-Broersma says her investment (投入) has been well worthwhile. “Running really _______ my life,” she said. “It gave me a sense of freedom. I fell in love with the process of _______ my body further just to see what I could do.”

Hunt-Broersma is hoping to _______ a single thought in others — “You’re ________ than you think and you’re capable of so much more.”