【推荐1】Dad had a green comb. He bought it when he married Mum. Every night, he would hand me his ________ and say, “Good girl, help Daddy clean it, OK?”

I was ________ to do it. At age five, this boring task brought me such ________ . I would excitedly turn the tap ________   and brush the comb carefully. Satisfied that I’d done a good job, I would happily return the comb to Dad. He would ________ at me and place the comb on his wallet.

Two years later, Dad started his own ________ which wasn’t doing so well. That was when things started to ________ . Dad didn’t come home as early and as much as he used to. Mum and I became ________ with him for placing our family in trouble. With   ________ , an uncomfortable silence grew between us.

After my graduation, Dad’s business was getting back on track. On my 28th birthday, Dad came home________. As usually I helped him carry his bags into his study. When I turned to leave, he said, “Hey, would you help me ________ my comb?” I looked at him a while, then ________ the comb and headed to the sink.

It hit me then: why, as a child, ________ Dad clean his comb was such a pleasure. That routine (惯例) meant Dad was home early to ________ the evening with Mum and me. It ________ a happy and loving family.

I passed the clean comb back to Dad. He smiled at me and ________ placed his comb on his wallet. But this time, I noticed something ________ . Dad had aged. He had wrinkles next to his eyes when he smiled, ________ his smile was still as ________ as before, the smile of a father who just wanted a good ________ for his family.

【推荐3】Another person’s enthusiasm was what set me moving toward the success I have achieved. That person was my stepmother.

I was nine years old when she entered our home in rural Virginia. My father _______ me to her with these words: “I would like you to meet the fellow who is distinguished for being the worst boy in this county and will probably start throwing rocks at you no _______ than tomorrow morning.”

My stepmother walked over to me, raised my head slightly upward, and looked me right in the eye. Then she looked at my father and replied, “You are wrong . This is not the worst boy at all, _______ the smartest one who hasn’t yet found an outlet(释放的途径)for his enthusiasm.”

That statement began a(n)_______ between us. No one had ever called me smart. My family and neighbors had built me up in my _______ as a bad boy. My stepmother changed all that.

She changed many things. She _______ my father to go to a dental school, from which he graduated with honors. She moved our family into the county seat, where my father’s career could be more _______ and my brother and I could be better _______.

When I turned fourteen, she bought me a secondhand _______ and told me that she believed that I could become a writer. I knew her enthusiasm, I ________ it had already improved our lives. I accepted her ________ and began to write for local newspapers. I was doing the same kind of ________ that great day I went to interview Andrew Carnegie and received the task which became my life’s work later. I wasn’t the only beneficiary(受益者). My father became the wealthiest man in town. My brother and stepbrothers became a physician, a dentist, a lawyer, and a college president.

What power ________ has! When that power is released to support the certainty of one’s purpose and is ________ strengthened by faith, it becomes an irresistible(不可抗拒的)force which poverty and temporary defeat can never ________.

You can communicate that power to anyone who needs it. This is probably the greatest work you can do with your enthusiasm.

【推荐1】Maria’s Plans

Maria stared thoughtfully at the tree fort. It was the first thing her grandpa had built for her. She had been little — it was before her younger brothers had been born.

Of all her brothers, Maria felt that she was most like her grandpa. Grandpa had been a carpenter. Maria had always loved visiting him in his workshop. Only she had been allowed because she was the oldest. He could do anything with his own two hands, she thought________.

Recently, Maria had decided that she was going to build a tree swing. Now she was standing________the tree, with her rope, seat, and tools, thinking about the best way to________the swing. She could throw the ropes________the branch. But then how would she tie the knot? She would probably need to________a ladder.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” called a voice from a little distance away. Maria turned and saw her little brother Ricardo ran up to her. “None of your business,” she replied. Then, thinking better of it, she said, “________ a swing.”

“Really? Can I help?” Ricardo asked. Maria thought it over — it would be nice to have some help. But she was the builder in the family now, so she would have to solve her own problems. “No,” Maria said. “I don’t need any help.”

Suddenly, her other brother, Emil, came running towards them. “Hey, what’re you guys doing?”

“We’re building a swing,” Ricardo said.

“No, we’re not,” Maria said. “I am!”

“Can I help?” Emil asked. “No!” Maria was turning red. “This is my project. Not yours. You________even knew Grandpa.” She ran into the house, leaving Ricardo, Emil, and her materials beneath the tree.

“What’s wrong, Maria?” Grandma asked.

“Ricardo and Emil are bothering me,” Maria explained the situation.

“They’re just trying to help. And how are you going to do it all by yourself?”

“Grandpa didn’t need anyone’s help,” Maria said.

“Who do you think helped him cut the boards for your tree fort?”

Grandma asked. Maria was________. “But I don’t remember...”

“Maria, Grandpa was a great carpenter, but even great carpenters need help sometimes.________ he needed a second pair of hands, he’d ask me to help.” Grandma glanced out the window. “And it looked like you need help, too.”

Maria hurried outside. Ricardo and Emil were carrying the ladder in the yard, waving at Maria. Smiling, she began to wonder if she might not be the only one to________Grandpa.

【推荐3】There once was an ordinary street in the suburbs where no one cared much for their gardens. The lawns were overgrown, the weeds were _________ and the hedges(树篱)desperately needed to be cut back. It looked very _________. But when the neighbors saw their gardens, they just looked at each other and went away with _________.

It seemed too hard to _________ all the gardens and no one could be bothered to make them better because everyone’s garden was _________ terrible. No one felt it was urgent for a _________. Then a man named Bill _________ here. Bill was a _________, hard-working and patient man who started working in the garden as soon as he _________ in the street. He took his lawn mower(割草机)out to cut back the grass and pulled out all of the __________. Finally, he took up his gardening and started __________his hedges, making them look like flowers, plants, stones, balls, etc.

Attracted by the hard-working __________, the neighbors walked by and __________ the newly manicured(修整的)garden. Over some time, something __________ happened. One by one, the neighbors started to put in more __________ in their own gardens and the sounds of lawn mowers could be heard again. After a few months, the street was __________ from a dirty, unappealing collection of houses to a beautiful avenue that wouldn’t be out of __________ in a stylish magazine.

One person’s action showed everyone what could be __________ with a little hard work. It’s easy for us to __________ the environment around us because no one else cares about it. Remember what you positively do not only brings the __________ to yourself, but also results in a change to the whole world.

【推荐1】Cecilia Chiang died on Wednesday at her home in San Francisco. She was 100. Her San Francisco restaurant, the Mandarin, __________American diners in the 1960s to the richness and________of authentic Chinese cuisine(菜系).

Ms. Chiang was born in a__________family. When she was little, children were not allowed in the _________, but she paid close attention on trips to the __________ markets with her mother and listened carefully as__________ instructions were given to the cooks. After her parents died, she __________the family business in her teens.

After the Japanese occupied Beijing in 1939, she was__________to join relatives in Chongqing, where she married Chiang Liang, a professor.

Ms. Chiang sailed to San Francisco in 1960 to help her sister. There she met two women who wanted to__________ a restaurant that __________Chinese diets. Later, when the two women __________, Ms. Chiang decided to open a restaurant herself. The early days were __________ . But little by little, customers came__________for hot and sour soup and pan-fried potstickers. One evening, Herb Caen, the popular columnist(专栏作家)for The Chronicle, __________at the restaurant. In a __________column, Herb Caen__________it “a little hole-in-the wall” that was offering “some of the best Chinese food east of the Pacific.”

Overnight the __________filled. The Mandarin was on its way. In 1968, Ms. Chiang moved the restaurant to __________quarters, where she could__________300 diners. “I think I__________what average people know about Chinese food,” Ms. Chiang told The Chronicle in 2007, “They didn’t know China was such a big country.”

【推荐3】The day before Mother’s Day this year, police received a call from Doris, a heavy-hearted wife. Her husband Melvyn, who suffers Alzheimer's disease, had gone_______from the Little Rock, Arkansas home.

Police found Melvyn two blocks from their home, unable to tell officers where he _______．However, as to where he was going, he wasn’t _______ he was buying his _______ flowers for Mother's Day, as he had every year since she gave birth to their first child．

Melvyn’s condition has been slowly _______ since he was diagnosed with the disease three years ago. His wife has become her husband’s carer, watching _______ as the cruel disease _______her husband’s memories and personality away from him．

Officers intended to take the elderly man straight home—but Melvyn was having _______ of that.” He was pretty _______.” Officer Troy told CBS, “he wasn’t going home ____________ he got those flowers.” So the officers decided to lend him a ____________, secretly stopping in at a local supermarket and helping him ____________ a bunch of beautiful cream-colored roses．“I didn't have a __________；we had to get those flowers, ” Officer Troy says. The ____________ officers even secretly slipped the cashier some extra cash when Melvyn couldn’t ____________ the bill.

Doris was ____________ when she saw her husband of 60 years walking up their front stairs in the company of the police officers, but her relief turned to ____________when he presented her with the flowers．

“As he came up those steps, and I saw those roses and the smile on his face, I was touched ____________, “Dons told CBS, “I just said, thank you, thank you, because I saw his ____________.”

“It’s special, because even though his mind doesn’t remember everything, his heart ____________.”