1 . A large cat arrived at a farm where many mice lived. None of them dared(敢于)go outside for fear of being _____by the cat.

The mice decided to hold a ____ to find a way of stopping themselves from being in   ____. One day,when the cat was out,mice of all ages _____into the meeting room.

“Let’s build a big trap,”one mouse _________. When this idea was ____, another said,“What about poisoning (毒死) her?” But _____ knew where to buy the poison. One young mouse,whose mother had become the cat’s food, _____said,“Let’s cut her teeth,so she can do no more harm.” But the meeting did not accept his _____.

At last,one mouse,_____than the rest,jumped onto a table. Waving a bell,he called for____, “Be quiet! We’ll tie this bell to the cat’s tail,so we’ll always know_____she is! We’ll have _______to escape,and the slower and weaker mice will hear her coming and be able to ___!” Hearing the words,everyone got _____and they congratulated him on his good idea.

“We’ll tie it so tightly (紧紧地) that it will never _____!”

“She’ll never be able to walk ______again! Why,the other day,she suddenly appeared right in front of me! Just imagine...”

However,the wise mouse said,“We must _____who is going to tie it on her tail.” There was not a sound in the room. Nobody was _____enough to put the plan into action. The meeting ended without any decision being made.

It’s often very _____to have bright ideas,but putting them into practice is a more difficult matter.

2 . A Narrow Escape

Shortly after the war, my brother and I were invited to spend a few days’ holiday with an uncle who had just returned from abroad. He had rented a cottage in the country, although he hardly spent much time there. We understood the reason for this after our arrival: the cottage had no comfortable furniture in it. Many of the windows were broken and the roof leaked (漏水), making the whole house wet.

On our first evening, we sat around the fire after supper listening to the stories our uncle told of his many adventures in distant countries. I was so tired after the long train journey that I would have preferred to go to bed; but I could not bear to miss any of my uncle’s exciting stories. He was just in the middle of describing a rather terrifying experience he had once had when there was a loud crash from the bedroom above, the one where my brother and I were going to sleep.

When we got to the top of the stairs and opened the bedroom door, a strange sight met our eyes. A large part of the ceiling had fallen right on to the pillow of my bed.

Yesterday my parents were heading off on a little holiday and I took them to the train station, the rain was pouring down.

I got their luggage out, helped them get to the elevator and sent them on their way. As I was walking back to the parking lot, I saw an elderly man walking slowly toward the bus station. Obviously, he had no umbrella. I walked over and asked him where he was going. It turned out that he was heading to the same town as I was, just a 15-minute drive. I offered him a lift which he gratefully accepted.

We had a lovely chat on the way and I learned some of his history. He was 87 and heading to the nursing home he had just put his beloved wife in last week. He had his driving license taken away last year so he had to take public transport every day. A tear fell down his cheek as he told me about his wife. I tried to hold back my own tears but failed.

As I dropped him off at the entrance of the nursing home, I gave him the bunch of flowers I had in the car which I had given to my mom on Mother’s Day. I would much rather see the flowers indulged in by him and his wife than just take them back home. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he thanked me gratefully. As I made my way back to my car, I totally lost control of my emotions and cried like a baby. I just felt that all the stars shone for some reason and I was meant to meet him today. I was very glad to be able to help him in some way.

4 . My car needed some mechanical work that I could not do myself. Since the garage I had been taking my car to had ______, my friend Dave gave me a recommendation: D’s Auto Repair.

I was pleasantly ______ to discover that the owner of D’s was a mechanic who had worked on my car several years earlier. ______ he was an employee at a gas station near my house. I knew that his work was good.

I ______ the paperwork for the repair and ______ while D took a phone call from another customer. As I sat there, I looked around the small office to keep myself ______. A framed newspaper article caught my attention. The headline ______: “Local Dairy Farmer Kills Whole Herd.” The article was about the ______ of a fifth-generation dairy farmer during the polluted milk scare in Michigan several years earlier. Dairy cows were becoming ______ a disease that was affecting the milk supply. The fifth-generation dairy farmer paid to have all of his cows_______. It was found that out of the entire herd, only a few were infected. Because no one could ______ that the other cows were totally ______, he had the herd killed and buried to make consumers feel rest assured (放心). The farmer’s insurance did not cover his ______ because the state had not issued a(n) ______ for him to get rid of the herd. Asked why he did it, the farmer replied “Because it was the right thing to do.”

I asked D why he ______ the article on the wall. I thought that he might be related to or ______ knew the farmer. He said he had never met the man, but that the farmer was a(n) ______ to him and set a standard for integrity (正直), trust and honesty. He said that is how he ______ his auto Repair business.

I was now doubly ______ by both the farmer and D. The next year, on my ______, my son started a nine-month mechanics apprenticeship (学徒) at D’s Auto repair.

When I told my father that I was moving to Des Moines, Iowa, he told me about the only time he had been there. It was in the 1930s, when he was an editor of the literary magazine of Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas. He also worked as a professor at SMU, and there was a girl student in his class who suffered from a serious back disease. She couldn’t afford the operation because her family was poor.

Her mother ran a boarding house in Galveston, a seaside town near Houston, Texas. She was cleaning out the attic (阁楼) one day when she came across an old dusty manuscript (手稿). On its top page were the words, “By O. Henry”. It was a nice story, and she sent it to her daughter at SMU, who showed it to my father. My father had never read the story before, but it sounded like O. Henry, and he knew that O. Henry had once lived in Houston. So, it was possible that the famous author had gone to the beach and stayed in the Galveston boarding house, and had written the story there and left the manuscript behind by accident. My father visited an O. Henry expert at Columbia University in New York, who authenticated the story as O. Henry’s.

My father then set out to sell it. Eventually, he found himself in Des Moines, meeting with Gardner Cowles, a top editor at the Des Moines Register. Cowles loved the story and bought it on the spot. My father took the money to the girl. It was just enough for her to have the operation she so desperately needed.

My father never told me what the O. Henry story was about. But I doubt that it could have been better than his own story.

When I was a boy growing up, I could not once ever remember either my mom or my grandmother wasting food. Anything we didn’t eat at one meal was saved, stored, and served as leftovers (剩饭剩菜) later on. I can remember my grandmother making a huge pot of brown beans with a large cake of cornbread. We would all eat until we were stuffed but there was always about half of the beans left over. A few days later my grandmother would take those beans out of the refrigerator, boil pasta, add parsley and mix them all together into her delicious Pasta Fasule. And I also remember when I watched my mom fry bacon for us in the mornings, she would always take the grease (油脂) and carefully pour it into a container. Then she later would use it to flavor up so many other dishes. I was an adult before I realized that green beans didn’t actually taste like bacon.

I learned their lessons well and after I grew up I tried never to waste food by myself. I always planned the week’s meals ahead of time and only bought what was on my shopping list so nothing went to waste. Every meal went into my stomach and any leftovers were later eaten by either myself, my boys, or my dogs. To me throwing food in the trash was just wrong. All the work it took to grow it, harvest it, and prepare it needed to be honored, not wasted.

I learned something else over the years, however: when it comes to living there are no leftovers. Each moment that you don’t live is lost forever. Life cannot be saved. Life cannot be stored. Life has to be lived, TODAY!

Live each moment of your life to the fullest then. Make every day a feast of love with no leftovers. Leo Buscaglia once said: “Each day is a fresh beginning, a little life unto itself.” Don’t let any of these little lives go to waste. Live your life with a full belly and a full heart.

I walked to Mrs. Windsor’s house as I always did when I heard the piano. Before ringing the bell, I stood against the wall and sighed sadly. I daydreamed what I’d rather be doing. I had been tutored enough to read, understand, and even write some musical compositions, but I just didn’t have a gift for it. But Mrs. Windsor had offered to give me the lessons for free, so I felt it my duty to try.

The door opened. I walked in, sat down on the piano bench and began to sort through my sheet music. Today Mrs. Windsor introduced her niece Pasha to teach me. With a smile, Pasha sat beside me on the piano bench, opened my sheet music to the beginning page and asked me to play. I arranged my fingers on the keys. Then I frowned (皱眉) and concentrated to make the notes on the page match the finger movements. I had to admit I was a rather mechanical pianist.

After about a page or two, Pasha gently put her hand on top of mine as if to calm my fingers. There was a long pause. “Jennifer, what are you hearing in the music?” I looked at her rather strangely and admitted I didn’t know what she meant.

“Here, let me try and you listen,” Pasha advised.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting her fingers dance lightly over the keys. Then, she began to play.

“See, it begins here beside some kind of river. Hear the water flowing beside you?”

Her fingers rose and fell gently on the keys. “Now the princess appears and she’s picking flowers from the water’s edge.” A happy piece of music filled the air in time to Pasha’s dancing fingers. “Oh, but she slips!” The music changed. “And our princess is being carried off by the fast-flowing stream. Quickly, the princess’ horse sees her plight (困境) and races to the river’s edge where he swims out to let her catch hold of him. Luckily, they make it to the bank and she hugs her faithful horse.” Pasha finished with a big smile and then looked at me.

I was delighted and advised to try another one. Pasha smiled and together we played many pieces of music that afternoon, finding the stories in the music and learning that sometimes it takes a friend to pull you out of the river onto dry land again.