【推荐1】One day Mr. Brown sees a young woman in the street with children. He is very surprised because all the children are wearing the same clothes — white hats, blue coats and yellow trousers.

“Are all these children yours?” he asks the woman.

“Yes, they are.” she answers.

“Do you always dress them in the same clothes?” asks Mr. Brown.

“Yes,” answers the mother. “When we have only four children, we dress them in the same clothes because we don’t want to lose any of them. It is easy to see our children among other children because they are all wearing the same clothes. And now we have ten, we dress them like this because we don’t want to take other children home by mistake. When there are other children among ours, it is easy to see them because their clothes are different.”

【推荐2】There is a farmer who sells a pound of butter（一磅黄油）to a baker. The baker has a bread shop and makes bread to sell. One day, before he makes bread, the baker wants to weigh（称）the butter to see if he is really getting a pound, but he finds that he isn’t. Angry about this, he takes the farmer to the judge（法官）.

The judge asks the farmer if he is using any measures（量器）to weigh the butter. The farmer answers, “My dear judge, I don’t have a measure, but I do have a scale（天平）.”

The judge asks, “Then how do you weigh the butter?”

The farmer answers, “My dear judge, long before the baker starts buying butter from me, I already buy a pound of bread from him many times. Every day when the baker brings me the bread, I put it on the scale and give him the same weight in butter. If anyone is to be punished（受罚）, it is the baker. ”

What the story is trying to tell us is that we get back in life what we give to others. The Chinese people also have an old saying, “Don’t do to others what you don’t others to do to you. ” And a popular English saying also goes like this, “Honesty is the best policy（诚实为上策）. ” That’s why our parents an teachers always tell us to put honesty first. This is something what could live by.

【推荐3】Once upon a time there was a king who often thought, “Nothing good can come to a country whose people only complain (抱怨）and expect others to solve their problems.” One day, he had an idea. Early one morning, the king went to a local village. He placed a large stone in the middle of the main street and put gold coins under it. Then he hid behind a huge tree and watched.

The first person down the street was a milkman with bottles of milk. He walked into the stone, pouring the milk everywhere. “What fool put this stone here?” he shouted. He picked himself up and went away.

After a while, a group of women came along, each holding a pot of water on her head. One woman fell over the stone and her water pot broke into pieces. She picked herself up and walked away in tears. Neither she nor her friends thought about moving the stone out of the road.

The king watched all day as many people complained about the stone, but he found nobody wanted to move it. The king was disappointed. “Is there no one in this village who feels any responsibility (责任）to keep their neighbors from danger?”

Just then, the king saw a girl coming along. She was the daughter of a local farmer. She had been working all day and was very tired. But when she saw the stone, she said to herself, “This stone is a danger to anyone who comes down the street after dark. I’ll move it out of the way.” The girl tried her best to push the stone. Finally, she succeeded in moving it to the side of the street. Imagine her surprise when she saw the gold coins where the stone had been!

Just then, the king walked out from behind the tree. “Oh, sir,” the girl said, “Does this gold belong to you? If not, we surely must find the owner, for he will certainly miss it.” The king said, “My dear, the gold is mine. I put it in the road and moved the stone over it. Now the gold is yours, because you are the only person who has learnt the lesson I want to teach my people.”