Supplementary Readings2.The Pot of GoldOnce a farmer was put in prison. But he hadn't done anything wrong. He just hadn't paid taxes to the king. At that time the king's men were collecting money to fight more wars. The people had to pay one tax after another. Now this farmer was poor and didn't have any money. When the king's men came to his house, he said, "I can't give you any money. I'm such a poor man that I've hardly got enough to live on."
The king's men laughed. "You're trying to fool us, aren't you? We've heard you're so rich that you've got a whole pot of gold." Then they searched every room in the house but found nothing. Even so, they caught hold of the poor farmer and put him in prison. "You will stay in prison until we get the pot of gold from you," they said.
The poor farmer did not know what to do. Also, he was worried about his farm. He knew his wife couldn't do all the farm work by herself.
One day he got a letter from his wife. "I'm so worried about our farm," she wrote. "It's nearly spring. It's time to plant potatoes. But I can't dig up the fields just by myself." This made the farmer even more worried. "What can I do?" he thought. Suddenly he had an idea. He wrote a letter to his wife. "Don't dig the field," he wrote. "That's where it is --- you know, the pot. Don't plant the potatoes until I tell you to."
The farmer gave the letter to the prison guard, and asked him to send it to his wife. The prison guards, of course, had already read the letter from the farmer's wife. Now they read the farmer's reply. "Aha!" they said. "This sounds very interesting. He talks about a pot. He must mean the pot of gold. It seems this farmer really is a rich man."
"He says the pot is in the fields, but he doesn't say which field," another guard said. "This farmer has got several fields."
"It doesn't matter," the first guard answered. "We know there's gold in his fields. We'll find it."
Two weeks later, the farmer received another letter from his wife. "Something funny happened," his wife wrote. "Two weeks ago, about ten men came to our farm. All of them began to dig. They dug all our fields and now they've gone away. I can't understand it. It seems they were looking for something. What shall I do now?"
The farmer smiled when he read this. He wrote another letter to his wife at once. It was very short. "Since these men have dug up our fields, you can go ahead and plant the potatoes."
At page 166, 167, 168, Book 5, The English Textbooks Series for Junior Secondary School(The 1st Edition, Published by the People's Educations Press, October 1983)
Supplementary Readings3 & 4. The Broken LanternOne stormy night, Kate looked out of a window. She had never seen a storm like this. It had been raining for a whole week. The rain-water was rushing down on its way to the river and the creek nearby. Kate wondered whether the water would wash away any of the bridges. The storm kept sweeping down the valley. Both the river and the creek rose higher and higher.
Just then Kate heard a sound. An engine was moving towards the wooden bridge over the creek. It was coming from the next town. Kate knew why the engine was coming at this time of night. The men were testing the bridge to find out if it was still safe. The midnight passenger train would come through soon.
Suddenly there was a loud noise! Kate jumped up. She knew what that meant.
"Mother," Kate cried. "The bridge has broken. The engine has gone down!"
The family rushed to the window and looked out. Kate was the first to speak.
I'm going out! Somebody down there may still be alive." She turned to get a lantern.
"All right," said her mother. "Do what you can --- but be careful."
Kate got a lantern, put on her coat, and hurried out into the storm. She made her way through the beating rain, and climbed over the tracks. Finally she reached the broken bridge. She looked down.
"Anyone down there?" she shouted. She listened but heard only the wind.
Then a voice called out from below.
"Two of us. We're quite safe here. But the midnight train will soon be coming! You must try to stop it."
"Right! I'll try to stop it before it gets here," she called back. And with these words she left at once.
The railway station was only a mile away. But it was on the other side of the river. To get there, you had to cross a long wooden railway bridge. Even in the daytime, that bridge wasn't safe. There was no place for people to walk on and the sides were open. You almost had to walk right on the railway tracks.
Kate stopped when she came to the bridge. The rain was beating against her face and the wind was blowing hard. She had never seen the river so high. She started across the bridge. But it shook suddenly. She fell and broke her lantern.
"I must get across," she kept thinking to herself. "I must stop that train. I must!"
She started to crawl on her hands and knees across the bridge. He broken lantern knocked against her with each move. It seemed like hours before she reached the other side. When she finally opened the door of the one-room station, she was all wet. She was so tired that she could hardly talk.
"Kate? Is that you? What's wrong?" the stationmaster asked in surprise.
"The bridge has broken … the engine went down … two men …"
The stationmaster rushed out with his red lantern. The midnight train was coming --- and coming fast!
The train came to a stop. The engineer got off the train and walked over to the stationmaster, "What's the matter?" he asked angrily.
"The bridge over the creek is broken. A girl brought the news."
Suddenly they saw Kate standing before them. The engineer told his men to tell the passengers what had happened.
"But the two men," Kate called. "We must get back to those two men at the bridge."
The engineer ran back to his train and started it moving slowly along the tracks. He stopped at the river. With a rope, the engineer and his men got the two men up to safety.
So the two men and all the passengers on the train were saved. Soon after that, papers all over the country carried the story. From then on, all trains passing Kate's home would stop right at her front door. They did this to show their thanks. What a brave thing she had done on the night of that terrible storm!
At page 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, Book 5, The English Textbooks Series for Junior Secondary School(The 1st Edition, Published by the People's Educations Press, October 1983)
Supplementary Readings5. The "Lady with the Lamp""Be a lady, dear." How many times young Florence Nightingale had heard these words from her parents! But for her, to be a lady was not enough. She wanted to do something for others.
Florence's father was a very rich man. Florence took lessons in music and drawing, and read a great deal. She could speak several foreign languages. And she travelled a lot with her parents.
As a child, she liked visiting sick people and enjoyed helping them. She often visited hospitals in other countries. She saw so much suffering that she knew she must help. She decided that she was going to be a nurse. But her father told her that nursing wasn't the right work for a lady.
"Then I will make it so," she smiled. And she went to learn nursing in Germany and France. When she returned to England, Florence started a nursing home for women. Here she did everything --- from washing floors to giving the sick new hope.
During the war in 1854, many soldiers were wounded or became ill. The front was in great need of medical care. Florence Nightingale went with thirty-eight nurses to the hospitals near the front.
When she arrived there, she found things were much worse than she had thought. Florence used her own money and some from friends to buy beds, clothes, medicine and food for the men. Her only pay was the smiles from the sick and wounded soldiers. But they were more than enough for this kind woman.
Florence was weak and ill herself, but she did not stop working. Her thin hands were busy day and night. Often, she worked for twenty-four hours without rest. Every night, she carried a lamp and walked past each bed. To the sodiers she was the "Lady with the Lamp". One of them wrote: "What a joy it was just to see her pass! She would speak to one, smile to many more. She could not speak to all, you know, there were hundreds of us. But we could kiss her shadow as it fell on the wall."
After the war, Florence returned to England. There, the Queen honoured her for her work.
But Florence said that her work had just begun. She got people to give money to build the Nightingale Home for Nurses in London, and she got young girls to learn nursing there. She also wrote a book on nursing.
On August 13, 1910, Florence Nightingale, at the age of ninety, died quietly in her sleep. To this day, we still remember her when we honour nurses.
At page 175, 176, 177, Book 5, The English Textbooks Series for Junior Secondary School(The 1st Edition, Published by the People's Educations Press, October 1983)