1 . When Wendy McDowell was eight years old, she found herself all alone in one of the busiest international airports in the country. “Do you know what feeling I had then?” she recalled. “When I looked around, every single face was a stranger’s face. How terrifying it was!”

It was two decades ago and McDowell needed to fly from Bismarck to Burlington. No one in her family could go with her, so her parents let a 19-year-old relative accompany her.

However, when they arrived at their layover (中转站) , their flight was canceled. What the relative did next still shocked McDowell. “She just bought herself a ticket back home and left me alone. With no flight, no plan, and no adult in charge of me,” she said. “I felt so hopeless until a woman walked to me.”

“I remember she came and sat next to me,” McDowell recalled. “And I just remember immediately feeling a sense of safety because someone was with me.” After managing to make herself trusted by McDowell, the woman asked McDowell’s destination and her mother’s phone number. And on the phone, she convinced McDowell’s mother that her daughter would be safe with her.

“She said, ‘If you trust me, I will take care of you.’ She indeed did it,” McDowell said. The woman was flying to Pittsburgh, but she made a detour (绕路) to Burlington to drop off McDowell. The kindness of the stranger has left a lifelong impact on McDowell.

“The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve been thinking about her,” she said. “She did all just for a stranger. Something that didn’t seem huge to her has completely redirected my life, because I don’t think I have ever been treated as badly as I was by the person who left me.”

McDowell has used that experience to teach her son about kindness. “I want him to know that people can choose to be beautiful and helpful. People like this are out there,” she said.

I have always loved libraries ever since I was a boy. Over the years I have read more books than I can count and I have visited the local libraries more times than I can remember. Now in the age of the Internet and with so many faces in screens instead of books, I am concerned that places like these will begin to fade away and we will lose all the joy they bring.

I stopped at the library nearest my home just the other day. It was right off from the local grade school and had been my home since I was young. I opened the door and walked inside. The librarian, David, greeted me warmly, “Good afternoon, Jane. Welcome to the library again.” On the desk next to him sat a beautiful, black cat. “Good afternoon, Mr David. What a cute cat!” I patted the cat gently on the head and smiled.

I gave David a book I wanted to donate and then wandered into the back room to look at the books for sale. The black cat had returned to the room. She stretched. She sharpened her claws for a moment on the furniture. Then she jumped up on the shelf. She meowed (喵喵叫) and let her head up against my hand hoping that I would start petting her again. I smiled and petted her head, and spoke sweetly to her while she rolled on her back.

I thought that if only we could let our guard down as easily and openly as this cat then this world would be a lot more beautiful. I gave my new furry friend some food and then walked out. Then I picked out a book about animal protection, where I learned a lot. The world is full of life, wisdom and love. Let’s benefit from people, nature, books and libraries, and occasionally friendly cats.

After that, I brought food for the cat every time I went to the library.

One day, when I came to the library, the cat greeted me with five little cats.

The birds were singing, and a slight breeze was blowing as I walked out onto the front yard of the house we lived in on Stuart s Lane, near Eureka, Missouri. It was a cool fall morning, and I was a St. Louis County Police Officer. My family and I lived in a house owned by my friend Dr. Wallace Stuart. He had built a stone castle near the house many years earlier and had later moved away. People continually trespassed(擅自进入)on the property and broke into the castle, so he gave me free rent to watch over it.

If anyone went up to the castle at night, our dog Samoa would begin to howl (嗥叫) like a wolf, and I would get dressed, get my gun, badge, ID, and a flashlight, and she and I would go to the dark castle. I trusted Samoa completely, and she would not make a sound until we were in a room with the trespassers. As I turned my flashlight on, she would automatically give out her blood-curling howl, which even caused the boys or men in the group to scream and there was never an incident where they tried to attack me.

On this particular morning, Samoa had begun howling, which usually meant we had trespassers; however, this time, she was looking toward the top of a hill. I examined the hillside carefully for anything she might be howling at, and then I heard a strange sound. It was like a huffing and snorting (呼哧呼哧的) sound a bear would make. I knew there weren’t any bears running free in St. Louis County, but I remembered the Endangered Wolf Center, which was within a mile and a half of our house. I wondered if they might also care for some bears, and possibly one escaped. By this time my wife had heard the sound, and she joined me on the front yard. As we stood there, she agreed the noise did sound like an angry bear.

As the noise seemed to be coming nearer, I decided to play it safe and took the police-issued shotgun from my car.

Suddenly the “animal” was upon us, but not on the ground with us, for this bear turned out to be a hot air balloon.

5 . One chilly December evening, I was preparing dinner. While setting the table, I suddenly heard a tremendous_________from the second floor. My seven-year-old son began screaming for help and I_________up the stairs without even stopping to put down the dinner fork I held in my hand.

Entering my son’s room, I found my_________son trapped under a five-drawer wooden dresser. As I leaned over, I saw his small face and the terror in his eyes. I_________the large dresser off him at once. At that moment, I was fearful to look but quickly tried to_________how badly he was hurt. Asking him to stay still, I dialed 911 and began to pray for him.

On the way to the emergency room seeing his nose was still bleeding and that he was_________about the bump on the back of his head bitterly, I tried to keep him calm. The nurses had looks of shock and_________as I explained that my son had been saved from a fallen heavy dresser. After testing it was_________that he could return home without being hospitalized. Even the doctor admitted that it was a_________he wasn’t seriously hurt.

Back at the house, my husband and I tidied up my son’s bedroom and found what we believe to have saved my son’s life—a hand-carved elephant. It was a(n)__________given by my friends from their African trip.

The elephant had taken the main__________of the dresser when it crashed. The elephant’s tail and ear had broken off but its back held the dresser top__________off the floor. It was the carved animal that gave my son the precious space he needed to avoid terrible__________.

Although that wooden elephant had been moved from shelf to shelf on occasion, it somehow__________resting on the dresser top. Fate had placed it there to serve its true__________ —saving my son’s precious life.

6 . In 2006, when Carl Allamby, an auto mechanic, enrolled in a night school at Ohios Ursuline College, he was pursuing a business degree to help him manage his repair shop. But there was one hurdle-a required biology class. He delayed taking the course until his last semester—“I couldn’t see what biology had to do with business,” he says—but when his enthusiastic instructor began discussing anatomy (人体学), awakened a long interest in medicine. Within an hour, Allamby knew that he would switch professions and pursue a career in healthcare.

As a child, Allamby always wanted to be a doctor. But growing up in a family with six children living on welfare, a medical career seemed like a fantasy. Young Allamby quickly set aside his professional pursuit and focused instead on becoming the best auto-mechanic he could be. And he’d been doing it well for the next 25 years. Yet he sold his shop once he entered medical school. Though giving up a successful career while raising a family may have seemed risky and exhausting, his wife and friends were supportive.

To the 43-year-old med school student, the transition from having a high level of expertise to starting all over was a challenge, but the volume and complexity of work were more demanding. “In a med school people usually pat you on the back and say ‘Good job’ when you get an average grade. But to me, I almost feel like a failure because I am not used to struggling so much to make it through,” Allamby said. With enormous efforts, he routinely scored in the top of his class in exams and graduated with a Bachelor degree in 2019 at age 47. Now he specializes in emergency medicine at Akron General. And yes, he still provides engine advice and will fix your problems. The meanings are just a little different now.

9 . Sleigh Ride is a cute, blue-gray pitbull dog, and she’d been hanging around Richmond Animal Care and Control’s shelter for quite a while. But a letter from a second-grader—written on the dog’s behalf—may have been the ticket home.

“Do you want to adopt (收养) me?” the letter read. “You can play with me! I promise that I will be a good dog. You can even sleep with me if you want!” “Within about 10 days of posting the letter alongside the shelter, someone adopted Sleigh Ride,” said Mr. Peters, director of Richmond Animal Care and Control.

The letter came from a student in Ms. Jones’ writing class. It was part of a persuasive writing task that asked students to write letters in the voice of one of 24 animals—23 dogs and one cat—at the shelter. In each letter, the young writers persuaded readers to adopt a pet, from the point of view of the animal.

So far, the students’ work has been effective. After posting the letters outside the shelter, only four dogs remain: Pebble, Yosemite, Kotey and Tumble. “It was just a magical marketing tool to help people find those pets and fall in love with them with the stories that the kids wrote, and then take that pet home with them,” Peters said. The students have been enthusiastic throughout the process. It probably helps that Peters brought in Snow, a white pitbull, for a visit with the students. The kids were “so excited and happy and jumping out of their skin” when they met the well-mannered little dog, Peters said.

Though the writing took place in early February, students still ask about the animals they wrote about. “Has Tumble been adopted?” Jones recalls one student asking before the day’s lesson had even started. Jones says she’s watched her students develop an eagerness to write, even beyond this project.