In a short time, a tall blond man showed up with a team of horses and pulled my car out of the snow into town. I asked him how much I owed him for his trouble. He refused any pay, saying, “I will charge you nothing but the promise that you will help the next man you find in trouble.” I thanked him and made the promise.
After he left, the storekeeper explained that the guy who had helped me was a Mennonite (孟诺派教徒) who considered it wrong to charge anyone for a service made necessary by an act of God.
Four years later, a friend and I were driving over flooded land south of St. Louis, Missouri. We crossed through water a foot deep without difficulty, but through my rearview mirror, I could see that the small car behind us was in trouble. I walked back with difficulty in the water while my companion turned the car around so I could hook up onto his car with chains.
We pulled the car out and waited until he got his engine started. Then he offered to pay me. I told him of my experience in Indiana, Pennsylvania, then repeated the Mennonite’s words: “I will charge you nothing but the promise that you will help the next man you find in trouble.” He promised, and we parted.
About a year later, my family and I were camping about a hundred miles from Aurora, Missouri. We put up our tents near the James River. We’d been told that it never flooded at that time of the year. However, the river evidently misread the calendar. I woke up in the middle of the night with a very cold back from water deep enough to cover the canvas bed. We loaded our wet equipment into our car, but we were unable to drive it to higher ground. I walked to an inn some distance from our camping spot and asked the innkeeper if he could get help to pull us out.
Shortly afterwards, a farmer showed up with a tractor and a long rope and pulled us to safe ground. When I offered to pay him, he told me of a man who had helped him get his tractor out of the mud and then said: “I will charge you nothing but the promise that you will help the next man that you find in trouble.”
I had never imagined that a man’s act of kindness could have traveled so far and wide.
51. What is the message of this story?
A. Kindness can spread from person to person.
B. Experiences of the author in different places.
C. How kind American people are.
D. How much the author liked sight-seeing when he was young.
52. From whom did the author first learn the statement “I will charge you nothing but the promise that you will help the next man you find in trouble”?
A. A tractor driver in Indiana.
B. A car driver in Missouri.
C. A shopkeeper in Pennsylvania.
D. A man in Pennsylvania.
53. What does the word “stalled” (in the first paragraph) probably mean?
A. Parked. B. Trapped. |
