1 . They were going to Florida — three boys and three girls. They were dreaming of golden beaches and sea tides as the grey, cold spring of New York vanished behind them. Vingo was on the bus from the beginning.

As the bus passed through New Jersey, they began to notice that Vingo never moved. He sat in front of the young people, his dusty face masking his age, dressed in a plain brown suit that did not fit him. He sat in complete silence and seemed completely unaware of the existence of the others.

Deep into the night, the bus pulled into a Howard Johnson’s restaurant and everybody got off the bus except Vingo. The young people began to wonder about him: perhaps he was a sea captain; maybe he could be an old soldier going home.

In the morning they awoke outside another Howard Johnson’s and this time Vingo went in. A girl invited him to join them. He seemed very shy and ordered black coffee and smoked nervously, as the young people chattered about sleeping on beaches. When they got back on the bus, the girl sat with Vingo again.

“Are you married?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” she said.

‘‘Well, when I was in jail I wrote to my wife. I said, ‘Martha, I was going to be away a long time. If you couldn’t stand it, if the kids kept asking questions, you could just forget me. I told her she didn’t have to write to me or anything, and she didn’t. Not for three-and-a-half years.

“And you’re going home now, not knowing?”

“Yeah. Well, last week, when I was sure the parole (有条件释放) was coming through I wrote her again. I told her that if she had a new guy, I understood. But, if she didn’t, if she would take me back she should let me know. We used to live in Brunswick, and there’s a great oak tree just as you come into town. I told her if she would take me back, she should tie a yellow ribbon (丝带) to the tree, and I would get off and come home. If she didn’t want me, forget it, no ribbon and I’d understand and keep going on through.”

“Wow,” the girl said “Wow.”

She told the others, and soon all of them were caught up in the approach of Brunswick. Now they were 20 miles from Brunswick, and the young people took the window seats on the right side, waiting for the approach of the great oak tree. Vingo stopped looking, tightening his face into the ex-criminal’s mask, and ________ . Then it was 10 miles, and then five, and the bus became very quiet.

Then suddenly all of the young people were up out of their seats, screaming and shouting and crying, doing small dances, shaking clenched fists in triumph and exaltation. All except Vingo.

Vingo sat there stunned, looking at the oak tree through his misty eyes. The tree was covered with yellow ribbons, 30 of them, 50 of them, maybe hundreds, a tree that stood like a flag of welcome, blowing and billowing in the wind. As the young people shouted, the old ex-criminal slowly rose from his seat, holding himself tightly, and made his way to the front of the bus to go home.

An Excerpt from The Woods Were Tossing with Jewels

In 1899 when I was five years old and living in Palmetto, Florida, my father decided to take his family through the wilds of the Everglades and have a claim on an offshore island. His purpose was to farm this island but behind this was his wish to give us a     1     of the way he grew up. He had been a cowboy in the Myakka area when he was fifteen years old. These ranchlands overlapped the north end of the Everglades at a time when it was     2    .

His life was a series of     3    . He had lost a father and a brother in the Civil War. His father’s carriage house in Charleston, South Carolina, and his nearby plantation were in the line of Sherman’s march. His widow took her eight-year-old son, my father, and fled to Quincy, Florida. When Papa finished school at the academy there, he went to work as a cowboy on a ranch in Myakka for a friend of his dead father’s. By age thirty, he was a county sheriff, no     4     job in those days, and his territory was wide ranging. The county he served was later split up into six or eight counties.

South Florida was     5     to many because of the mosquitoes, panthers, crocodiles, swamps, and wetlands. But these marks of wild country called to my father like the     6     siren song.

He started building a covered wagon around the fourth of July and we went into the wilderness with him in the fall. We had made our home in Palmetto for a year or so where my mother’s gentle folks, the Harrisons, had settled following the Civil War. Our comfortable two- story frame house on the Manatee River was set about with live oaks, guavas, and long-leafed pine that branched out from the foot of the tree to     7     our cow and provide a roost for the chickens. My grandfather was the town doctor. He doctored the entire county and was paid in eggs and ham and vegetables when they were in     8    . It was an idyllic life, and we lived close to our family and to the     9     and safety a small town could afford. But Papa was a man of     10    ; he realized that the untouched Ten Thousand Islands off the southwest coast of the state were rich in soil for crops and in game for food.

3 . A 47-year-old Frenchman had an unfortunate experience while walking around Cannes. Here he is to tell us all about it.

The Black Hole

I work in the philosophy department at the university. Just last week, I had some drinks with some friends in a bar. After a few glasses of wine, but not too many, mind you, I felt. It was about six in the evening, and it was starting to get dark. It had been raining heavily the past few days, but that night it was pleasant so I decided to walk home. However, I'd just turned the corner into my street when all of a sudden, "whoosh", I fell down an uncovered manhole.

Flying

It was an incredible experience. It was as if I was flying through the air. I could feel the cold, wet sides of the drain. Eventually my back was rubbing along the side, until "splash", I fell into a pool of running water.

A Water Ride

Now I was moving quite fast. The current was very strong — I guess it was because of all the heavy rain that had flooded the drain. Luckily the water wasn't very deep so I could keep my head above water. There was nothing I could do, so I lay back, with my hands behind my head, as if I was on slide in a water park, and just let myself go. It was quite pleasant really, except for the occasional mouthful of sickening water, and a horrible smell. When was it going to end? I was about to find out.

The End of the Ordeal

All of a sudden, I could see a light at the end of the tunnel. It started off quite small, but then it got bigger and bigger. A few seconds later I was shot up violently out of the drain, and onto the beach, right below the luxurious Majestic Hotel. I lay there for a few second, shaken, but unharmed. Then I picked myself up, walked up to the hotel and told them what had happened. Of course, at first it was hard to convince them that this dirty, wet middle-aged man with a horrible smell on him was in fact a dignified university professor. Anyway, they eventually believed me and allowed me to clean myself in one of the rooms.

Recovery

Miraculously, I was uninjured after my 30-minutes ride. I am currently in the process of charging the local council with failing to warn the public about the unmarked manhole.

Meanwhile, the town mayor has blamed "unusually strong rain fall" for the situation.

Once upon a time a man became a great archer (射手). He asked the king to declare him as the greatest archer of the country. The king was about to do so when an old servant of the king said,“Wait, my king. I know an old man who lives in the forest. He is a much greater archer. Let this young man go to him and learn from him for at least three years. ”

The man could not believe that there could be a greater archer than him, but he went and found the old man and he was! For three years he learned from him. Then one day, when he thought he had learned everything, the thought arose in him, “If I kill this old man, then I will be the greatest archer.”

The old man had gone to cut wood and he was coming back carrying wood on his shoulder. The young man hid behind a tree, waiting to kill him. He shot an arrow. The old man took a small piece of wood and threw it. It struck the arrow and the arrow turned back and wounded the young man badly. The old man came, took out the arrow and said, “I knew that some day or other you were going to do this. That’s why I have not taught you this secret. There is no need to kill me. My master is still alive, and I’m nothing better than him. It would take you at least thirty years to learn from him. Actually, one can never be the greatest.”