1 . Achilles was looking out of the windows while his grandchildren were playing around the house. “Look!” One child ______ all of a sudden. Achilles looked up only to see a small plane a few hundred yards away, losing ______. As a former Navy commander, he realized it was going to land in the icy river.

Achilles didn’t ______. He ran down to the waterfront. The plane had slid to a river far from shore and was now ______. The pilot was standing on the wing. Achilles knew from his Navy training that even a few ______ in the icy water could kill the pilot. Achilles tested the ice with his foot and decided not to ______ walking on it. So he and his son, Janson pulled two canoes out from their back deck. The two men ______ , pushing their boats across the ice. It was ______ work. When Achilles reached the plane, it had broken through the ice and sunk, with only its tail ______. With his son nearby, Achilles focused on keeping the pilot calm, ______ , “Just hang on to the boat as if you were hugging your wife.” The pilot ______ grabbed the paddle and the two men were floating together, but Achilles knew he had to get the pilot onto the shelf of unbroken ice ______ the man lost too much body heat.

Just at that time a police officer appeared and ______ for help. After a while, a rescue boat arrived, breaking through ice. It picked up the pilot and ______ him to safety. Achilles recalled. “I’m 60 years old,” he says. “There was no way I could get him to shore.” ______, he was satisfied he’d gone the right way that day.

3 . We love letters. Just as John Donne, a poet, _________ it, “Letters, to me and my friends mean _________ greetings; they get souls together. Thanks to letters, friends who are _________ speak.” He wrote these words nearly 400 years ago. Today, in the age of instant text message, social media, and email, they _________ ring truer than ever, because writing or receiving a letter has become such a _________ event.

A UK-wide survey undertaken by Sunday Times suggests that one in four of us has not _________ a letter for at least 10 years. That’s ten years without the bitter-sweet _________ of pacing the floor waiting for the _________; ten years without recognizing the handwriting on the envelope and eagerly _________ the letter to read its content.

We ____________ not get them any more, but we still love handwritten letters. In the same survey, one third of ____________ people interviewed say that they ____________ the content of sentimental (充满情感的) letters. Shouldn’t we make ____________ to give our friends and families what they will treasure forever? Ann Bickley went online in 2013 and offered to handwrite a letter to anyone who ____________ her. Her website received 50,000 ____________ in its first three months. Five years later, she is still the main ____________ behind one-million-lovely-letter.com and has personally written 4,000 letters offering hope and ____________ to strangers.

The thought behind a letter ____________ as much as its contents. “I never tell anyone that ____________ is going to be OK,” Ann Bickley says, “I am letting someone know that there is someone in the world who ____________ them.”

Who wouldn’t love to receive a letter like that? Let’s get writing!