3 . In April last year, I saw a post on the PNP (Pilots N Paws) website from a family in Topeka. They had to move to Virginia but they were on a very tight _______ . They could not afford to pay for _______ for their dog, Tiffy, and _______ wanted to take her with them.

It just _______ that I was planning another PNP flight with another pilot, Karen, who _______ to take Tiffy from Kansas City to Virginia. What I was to do was fly to Topeka to _______ Tiffy.

When I met Tiffy’s owners, they seemed very _______ . George, the husband, was trying to be calm, but I could tell this was _______ for him, having to leave his dog to a _______ and trust that everything would ________ .

After some goodbyes, I asked George and his wife to help me ________ Tiffy into the plane. I promised to take care of Tiffy and ________ them as soon as we got to Kansas City.

The flight was ________ , and Tiffy was a great passenger. The next day, she ________ with Karen and made it back to George in Virginia within a few days. He was so ________ and sent me a nice e-mail with pictures. It felt great to know that I had helped bring this family together again.

4 . Bruno went into the kitchen and got the biggest surprise of his life. He could barely believe his eyes. “Shmuel!” he said. “What are you doing here in my kitchen?”

Shmuel looked up and his terrified face _________ a broad smile on seeing his friend. “Bruno!” he said. “They asked me to polish the glasses. They said they needed someone with tiny _________.”

He held his hand out and Bruno noticed that it was like the hand of the pretend skeleton. In reply, Bruno held his own hand out, which appeared _________ and full of life. The veins (血管) weren’t visible through the skin, the fingers weren’t little more than dying twigs (细枝). Shmuel’s hand, however, told a very _________ story.

“Shmuel! Here!” said Bruno, stepping forward and putting some slices of chicken in his friend’s hand. “Just eat them.” The boy stared at the food in his hand for a moment and then looked up at Bruno with wide and _________ but terrified eyes. He threw a _________ in the direction of the door and then thrust all the slices into his mouth in one go.

“Thank you, Bruno.” said Shmuel, giving a faint smile.

Bruno smiled back and was about to offer him more food, but just at that moment Lieutenant Kotler reappeared. Bruno stared at him, feeling the _________ grow heavy, sensing Shmuel’s shoulders sinking down.

_________ Bruno, Lieutenant Kotler marched over to Shmuel and glared at him. Shmuel looked up at Lieutenant Kotler, who frowned, leaning forward slightly as he examined the boy’s face. “You have been eating,” said Lieutenant Kotler. “Did you _________ something from that fridge?” Shmuel looked toward Bruno, his eyes pleading for __________.

“Answer me!” shouted Lieutenant Kotler.

“No, sir. He gave it to me,” said Shmuel, tears welling up in his eyes. “He’s my friend,” he added.

“Do you know this boy, Bruno?” he asked in a loud voice.

Bruno’s mouth __________ and he tried to say the word “yes”, but then he realized that he couldn’t because he was feeling just as __________ himself.

“Tell me, Bruno!” shouted Kotler, his face growing red. “I won’t ask you a third time.”

“I’ve __________ seen him before in my life,” said Bruno immediately, “I don’t know him.”

Hearing that, Shmuel wasn’t crying any more, merely staring at the floor and looking as if he was trying to __________ his soul not to live inside his tiny body any more, but to __________ away and sail to the door and rise up into the sky, gliding through the clouds until it was far away.

6 . Hansen and his 10-year-old son Chase search the streets of Salt Lake City every weekend for the homeless to take to lunch. They started Project Empathy(共情)four years ago to ________a meal, listen to their stories and figured out how they could ________ help.

“Just start with a smile, a hello. It really just starts with that. If you do it, you can make a connection. A small gesture can have a ________ impact on others less fortunate,” Hansen ________ in an interview.

Some of these shared meals have turned into stronger ________ .Ward, a homeless, was ________ in a flat. He credited the Hansens with helping him ________the difficult process of moving off the streets. “It is great to have friends who make us feel ________ and I’m impressed with the pair,” Ward said.

Father and son’s ________have developed into a passion project that ________ faith and community, which emphasizes the ________ community members can have in uplifting the homeless. They know they can’t settle the homeless ________ alone. They’re hoping empathy will ________.

“My hope for the future is to ________ more connection across our country. We could and we will succeed ________ we have other people join in and help the homeless,” Chase said.

7 . That cold January night, I was growing sick of my life in San Francisco. There I was, walking home at one o’clock in the morning after a tiring practice at the _________. With opening night only a week away, I was still learning my _________. I was having trouble dealing with my part-time job at the bank and my acting at night at the same time. As I walked, I thought seriously about _________ both acting and San Francisco. City life had become too much for me.

As I walked down empty streets under tall buildings, I felt very small and cold. I began _________, both to keep warm and to keep away from any possible _________. Very few people were still out except a few sad-looking _________ people under blankets.

About a block from my apartment, I heard a sound behind me. I turned quickly, half _________ to see someone with a knife or a gun. The street was empty. All I saw was a shining streetlight. _________, the noise had made me nervous, so I started to run faster. Not until I reached my apartment building and unlocked the door did I realize what the noise had been. It had been my _________ falling to the sidewalk.

Suddenly I wasn’t cold or tired anymore. I ran out of the door and back to __________I’d heard the noise. Although I searched the sidewalk anxiously for fifteen minutes, my wallet was nowhere to be found.

Just as I was about to give up the search, I heard the garbage truck pull up to the sidewalk next to me. When a voice called from the inside, “Alisa Camacho?” I thought I was __________. How could this man know my name? The door opened, and out __________a small red-haired man with an amused look in his eyes. “Is this what you’re looking for?” he asked, __________ up a small square shape.

It was nearly 3 A.M. by the time I got into bed. I wouldn’t get much sleep that night, but I had gotten my wallet back. I also had gotten back some __________ of city life. I realized that the city couldn’t be a bad place as long as people were __________ to help each other.

8 . In 2020, Nancy Ballard, a 60-year-old retired entrepreneur, went for a routine checkup at her doctor’s office that turned into something extraordinary. In fact, she was carrying a painting of a plant she’d done when she arrived there. “It would be great if we had _________ like that for our chemotherapy rooms (化疗室),” the nurse said. Ballard asked to see one.

She was shocked by _________ she found. The walls were grey and bare, and the paint was chipping. “_________, the patients here have nothing to look at while taking chemo drips,” she said, “I couldn’t imagine how anyone could even get healthy in such _________rooms like that.” She made it her mission to _________ the place.

She started by e-mailing 20 local interior _________. She wrote, “You don’t know me. But my heart _________ after seeing these rooms.” She then asked whether they would _________ their time and money to transform just one of chemotherapy rooms each.

Six of them leapt into _________ action and each designer chose a theme: The dragonfly room, for example, __________ bright artworks and dragonfly wall ornaments. Most rooms got new __________, lights, artworks, and furniture. When the transformation was done __________, Dr. Hufford was delighted. “All the patients feel __________ by it,” he said. He even noted that his own tone of voice was __________ in the rooms and that he was better able to connect with his patients. Ballard was so encouraged by the patients’ reactions, but when praised, she said, “What I did paled __________ the patients’ courage to fight cancer”.

9 . Walk into any bookstore, and you can _________ avoid “bumping into” Charles Dickens. From Oliver Twist to A Tale of Two Cities, many of Dickens’ works still sell well today and are placed on _________ shelves.

As someone who teaches Dickens, the question of why we still read him is often on my mind. That question, however, was never more troubling to me than when I was giving a lecture one day, nearly ten years ago. I was telling the students that his writing created a “tune-in-next-week” type of _________ among readers. Then, a hand shot up. “But why should we still read this stuff?” the student asked. The answer I gave at that time was merely _________. “Because he teaches you how to think,” I said.

The question _________ me for years, and for years I told myself answers, but never with complete satisfaction. We read Dickens because he was not just a man of his own times, but also a man for our times. We read Dickens because his _________ of the human psyche (心灵) is deep. We read Dickens because we can learn from the experiences of his characters almost as _________ as we can learn from our own experiences.

These are all wonderful reasons to read Dickens. But these are not exactly the reasons why I read Dickens.

My search for an answer _________ but never with success, until one day a text message came from a student of mine. “We still read Dickens’ novels,” she wrote, “because they tell us why we are what we are.” Simple as it was, that’s the explanation I had _________ for years.

Like most people, I knew who I was without __________ it. I was Oliver Twist, always asking for more. I was Nicholas Nickleby, __________ that my dead father was watching me from beyond the grave. I was Pip, in love with someone far beyond my __________. I was all of these __________ and I began to understand more about why I was who I was because Dickens had told me so much about human beings and human __________.

Dickens casts a light on who we are during the best of times and the worst of times. That’s why we still need to __________ him today.