【推荐2】Twenty years ago, I drove a taxi for a living. One night I went to pick up a passenger at 2:30 a.m. When I arrived to collect, I found the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window.

I walked to the door and knocked, “Just a minute,” answered a weak, elderly voice. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her eighties stood before me. By her side was a small suitcase.

I took the suitcase to the car, and then returned to help the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the car. She kept thanking me for my kindness. “It’s nothing,” I told her. “I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated.”

“Oh, you’re such a good man.” She said. When we got into the taxi, she gave me an address, and then asked, “Could you drive through downtown?”

“It’s not the shortest way,” I answered quickly.

“Oh, I’m in no hurry,” she said. “I’m on my way to a hospital. I don’t have any family left. The doctor says I don’t have very long.”

I quietly reached over and shut off the meter(计价器).

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked, the neighborhood where she had lived, the furniture shop that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she’d ask me to slow down in front of a particular building and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

At dawn, she suddenly said,” I’m tired. Let’s go now.”

We drove in silence to the address she had given me.

“How much do I pay for you?” she asked.

“Nothing.” I said.

“You have to make a living,” she answered. “Oh, there are other passengers,” I answered.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto tightly. Our hug ended with her remark, “You gave an old woman a little moment of joy.”

【推荐1】Susan introduced herself, saying that she recently came from the South. She was a common woman with brown hair, and the class thought she must be another teacher who could be played trick on(作弄).

Sunday after Sunday, Susan came to class. She told the children how they could make a difference now. Little by little, the students began to love her. The more they liked her, the lovelier she became.

Susan taught in that Sunday school for forty years. Though she never married, or had children of her own, the town came to think of her as a parent since she taught many children. At last, her hair grew white. Her hands began to shake. Every now and then, she received a letter from a former student. There was a doctor, a scientist, a worker, a businessman, and many teachers among them.

One day she reached into her mailbox and pulled out a blue envelope(信封) with a foreign stamp. In the left corner was the name of a boy in her first Sunday school class, years ago. There was a picture in the envelope. She smiled at the man in the photo, still seeing the teenage boy in him. In the city of Delhi, India, he stood with other volunteers who had come to help the earthquake victims(幸存者).

The title read, “Because of you. I am here now.”

【推荐2】Every day, you may go to school on a school bus. But do you have lessons on the bus?

On a small farm in Mexico, there are no schools. A bus is the school. The driver of the bus is the teacher. It’s a school bus, but it doesn’t take the children to school. It just goes from place to place, and sometimes it comes to this farm. The bus will stay here for three months. Every time the bus comes, the farmers will come. They run, shout (大喊) and laugh to welcome the school bus.

When the bus is on the farm, in the morning, the teacher teaches the small children. In the afternoon, the bigger children come to have their lessons because they must work in the morning. At night, the fathers and mothers come to school. They want to learn, too. But the farmers hope they can have a real school some day.