Once there lived a rich man 【小题1】wanted to do something for the people of his town.【小题2】 first he wanted to find out whether they deserved his help.

In the centre of the main road into the town, he placed【小题3】very large stone. Then he 【小题4】(hide ) behind a tree and waited. Soon an old man came along with his cow.

“Who put this stone in the centre of the road?” said the old man, but he did not try to remove the stone. Instead, with some difficulty he passed around the stone and continued on his way.【小题5】man came along and did the same thing; then another came,and another. All of them complained about the stone but not tried to remove 【小题6】. Late in the afternoon a young man came along. He saw the stone,【小题7】(say) to himself: “The night【小题8】(be) very dark. Some neighbors will come along later in the dark and will fall against the stone.”

Then he began to move the stone. He pushed and pulled with all his  【小题9】(strong) to move it. How great was his surprise at last!【小题10】 the stone, he found a bag of money.

   When Dekalb Walcott Ш was just 8 years old, his father, a Chicago fire chief, let him tag along on a call. Dekalb says a lot of kids idolized (崇拜) basketball player Michael Jordan when he was growing up in Chicago in the1990s. Not him.

“I wanted to be like Dekalb Walcott Jr, ”he says of his father. So when his dad asked if he wanted to go on that call with him when he was 8, Dekalb was excited. “I'm jumping up and down, saying, ‘Mom, can I go? Can I go?’”

The experience changed Dekalb's life, and he told his dad on a visit to StoryCorps. “My eyes got big the moment the alarm went off, ” the younger Dekalb says. “This is the life that I want to live someday. ”

Now 27, the younger Dekalb is living that life. He became a firefighter at 21 and went to work alongside his dad at the Chicago Fire Department. Before his father retired, the pair even went out on a call together-father supervising (监督)son.

“You know, it's everything for me to watch young row, ”his father says. But he also recalls worrying about one particular fire that his son faced.

“I received a phone call that night. And they said, ‘Well, your son was at this fire. ' I said, ‘OK, which way is this conversation going to go?'”Dekalb Walcott Jr. recalls.

“And they said, ‘But he's OK. And he put it out all by himself. Everybody here was proud of him. ’”

“And the word went around, ‘Who was out there managing that fire? Oh, that’s Walcott!That's Walcott up there!’So, you know, moments like that, it's heaven on earth for a dad. ”

Dekalb Walcott Jr. has retired. The younger Dekalb says he's proud of being a second-generation firefighter. “You know, it makes me look forward to fatherhood as well, because I'm definitely looking forward to passing that torch (火把) down  to my son. ”

   Brownie and Spotty were neighbour dogs who met every day to play together. Like pairs of dogs you can find in any_________, these two dogs loved each other and played_________so often that they had worn a path through the grass of the field between their own houses.

One evening, Brownie’s family_________that Brownie hadn’t returned home. They went looking for him with no_______. Brownie didn’t appear the next day, and, despite their_______ to find him, by the next week he was still missing.

Curiously, Spotty_________at Brownie’s house alone, barking. Busy with their own lives, they just ignored (to pay no attention to) the_________little neighbour dog. Finally, one morning Spotty_________to take “no” for an answer. Spotty followed Ted about, barking strongly, then running towards a nearby wood, as if to say, “_______ me! It’s urgent!”

Ted followed the anxious Spotty. The little dog led the man to a__________spot a half mile from the house. There Ted found his beloved Brownie________, one of his hind legs stuck in a steel trap. Horrified, Ted now wished he’d taken Spotty’s earlier requirement________. Then Ted noticed something quite remarkable.

Spotty had done more than simply__________Brownie’s owner to his trapped friend. In a circle around the__________dog, Ted found some dog food---which was later__________as the remains of every meal Spotty had been fed that________!

Spotty had been visiting Brownie________, in the hope of keeping his friend alive by offering his own comfort. Spotty had obviously stayed with Brownie to protect him from being hurt, snuggling (依偎) with him at night to keep him__________and touching him gently with its nose to keep his spirits up.

Brownie’s__________was treated by a veterinarian and he recovered. For many years afterwards, the two families watched the faithful friends frolicking (嬉戏) ________ chasing each other down that well-worn path between their houses.