I noticed the woman when I entered the newsroom. My secretary told me she wanted to put an ad to   36  a baby. So I suggested several    37 lines for these ads to her:   38 , Baby to love; or Dear Birth Mother, Let Us Help You. The ad would contain   39  about her and her husband: they were   40 , could afford to raise a child. But then something   41  me: the major newspapers carried ads like this and their  42  were larger than ours. “Have you tried the major ones?” I asked. “Yes, but all failed and one more wouldn’t   43 .” She handed me a check and left with a   44  smile.
A week later the woman called in a    45  of delight: “Please don’t run the ad again. We ’ve connected with   46 . The baby is due in a month.” Good news. I asked her if she   47  keep in touch if the adoption   48  to have a happy ending. She agreed but added when the adoption was final she was   49   to give me the story.
One day my phone rang. I   50  her voice immediately. “The adoption is final. Would you like to come and meet him?” Happily, I made a (an )  51  with her for the next day. “His name is Ben,” she said, as I started to take                  52 . “He slept through the night from the start. Now he’s smiling and starting to turn over. Of course I’m not   53  him. If he is a little slow.” She paused. “ Oh, I should tell you Ben has Down’s Syndrome.(唐氏综合症)” I stopped writing . I wasn’t sure how to   54 . But she smiled “Ben was meant for us, don’t you see? He needs me more than a   55  developing child would.” She sat on the sofa, holding her son. Both of them smiled. “You wanted a story with a happy ending,” said the woman “ You got it.”

To me, life without music would not be exciting. I realize that this is not true for everybody. Many people get along quite well without going to the concert, and listening to the record. But music plays an important part in everyone's life, whether he realizes it or not. Try to imagine, for example, what films or TV plays would be like without music. Would the feelings, the moving plot, and the greatest interests, be so exciting or dramatic? I'm not sure about it.
Now, we have been speaking of music in its more common meaning----the kind of music we hear in the concert hall. But if we look at some parts of music more closely, we discover them in our everyday life too----in the rhythm of the sea, the melody of a bird in the woods and so on. So music surely has meaning for everyone, in some way or other. And, of course, it has special meaning for those who have spent all their lives working on playing or writing music.
It is well said, “Through music a child enters into a world of beauty, expresses himself from his heart, feels the joy of doing things alone, learns to take care of others, develops his mind and makes his body strong.”
【小题1】 What dose the writer say more about in the text?

When I was a child, I had an old neighbour named Dr. Gibbs. He didn’t look like any other doctor I’ve ever known. He never  11__ at us for playing in his yard. I remembered him as a kind and  _12_ person
When Dr. Gibbs didn’t work, he planted trees. His house covered an area of ten acres, and his life’s goal was to make it _ 13_ .
He had some interesting _ 14 _ concerning planting. He belonged to the “No pains, no gains”  __15  of plant growing. He never watered his new trees. Once I asked  _16__, he said, “Watering plants will spoil them, and if you water them, each successive tree_ 17_ will grow weaker and weaker. So you have to make things 18__for them and weed out the weak ones.” So he never watered his trees. He would _19__a pine, and instead of _20__it every morning, he beat it with a rolled-up newspaper. I __21__ him why he did so, and he said it was to get the tree’s _22__.
I planted a couple of trees a few _23__ ago. I carried water to them for a solid summer, sprayed them and prayed over them. Two years of careful tending has _24__ in trees that expect to be _25__ to hand and foot. Whenever a cold wind blows in, they tremble their branches.
Dr. Gibbs passed away a _26__of years after I left home. Now and then, I walked by his house and looked at the trees. They’re _27__ now, big and healthy.
Funny things about Dr. Gibbs’ trees. Hardship and difficulty seemed to benefit them _28__
comfort and ease never could.
Life is tough, whether we want 29_ to be or not. Too many times we pray for ease, but that’s a prayer seldom met. What we need to do is to pray for 30_ that reach deep into the earth, so when the rains fall and the winds blow, we won’t be swept away.

A school teacher decided to let her class play a game. The teacher told each child in the class to bring along a plastic bag containing a few    16  . Each tomato will be given a name of a person that the child    17  , so the number of tomatoes that a child will put in the plastic bag will depend on the number of people the child hates.
So when the day came, every    18   brought some tomatoes. Some had two; some three while some up to five tomatoes. The teacher then told the children to    19   with them the tomatoes in the plastic    20   wherever they go.
Days after days passed by, and the children started to complain due to the    21   smell let out by the rotten tomatoes. Besides, those having more tomatoes had to carry    22   bags. After 1 week, the children were relieved because the game had finally ended.
The teacher asked: “How did you    23   while carrying the tomatoes with you for 1     24  ?”
The children let out their frustrations and started    25   of the trouble that they had to go through having to carry the heavy and    26  tomatoes wherever they go.
Then the teacher told them the hidden meaning behind the    27  .
“This is exactly the    28   when you carry your hatred(憎恨) for somebody inside your heart. The unpleasant smell of hatred will pollute your    29   and you will carry it with you wherever you go. If you cannot tolerate the smell of rotten tomatoes for just 1 week, can you imagine what is it like to have the smell of hatred in your heart for your lifetime?”
So    30   others is that best attitude to take!

It is winter in many parts of the world. For some areas, that means snow. Maybe even lots of snow. If you don’t have to drive in it or remove it, snow can be very beautiful. When snow covers everything around you, the world looks like a “winter wonderland”. That is the name of a very popular song about winter. Richard Smith and Felix Bernard wrote the song back in 1934. There are hundreds of recordings of this happy song.
But winter is not always such a beautiful and happy time. It’s cold outside. You try hard to keep warm. The days are darker and shorter. The sun rarely shines. The leaves on the trees are brown. It isn’t surprising that some people are sad in winter. And some people dream about being somewhere else where it’s warm and pretty—like the state of California. The Mamas and the Papas recorded this famous song “California Dreaming”.
During the 1960s, many other famous rock groups released songs about winter. Here is a poetic song by Simon and Garfunkel called “A Hazy Shade of Winter”. They sing about life and hope and possibilities.
In 1968, the group Blood, Sweat and Tears recorded this gentle, sad song about winter. They sing about a lost love and forgotten memories in “Sometimes in Winter”.
In the early 1990s, Tori Amos wrote and recorded the beautiful song called “Winter”. She enjoyed singing about winter when she was a child.
Finally, on a happier note comes this song written and recorded by Fountains of Wayne in 2003. They sing about a snowstorm in a New England town. Nothing unusual there. But instead of being sad or tense about the snow, they write a song about it.
【小题1】 The underlined sentence “For some areas, that means snow.” probably means 
_____ .