In Mollie's opinion a good book should

In Mollie's opinion a good book should

А) be attractive to a wide audience.

B) be attractive primarily to youngsters.

C) be based on original ideas.

D) include a lot of description.

How does Mollie feel about what has happened to her birthplace?

А) confused

B) ashamed

C) disappointed

D) surprised

In comparison with children of earlier years, Mollie feels that modern children are

А) more romantic.

B) better informed.

C) less keen to learn.

D) less interested in fiction.

Mollie's adult visitors generally discover that she

А) is a lively person.

B) is interesting company.

C) talks a lot about her work.

D) pays more attention to their children.

Peska taught

A) drawing.

B) Italian.

C) English.

D) politics.

Peska impressed people by being

A) well-built.

B) well-mannered.

C) strange.

D) ill-mannered.

Peska tried to become a true Englishman because he

A) was thankful to the country that had adopted him.

B) enjoyed Englishman's pastimes and amusements.

C) loved the way the English did athletic exercises.

D) was fond of the eccentric fashions of the English.

4. ‘… risk his limbs blindly’ means Peska

A) didn’t look where he went.

B) was unaware of danger from others.

C) caused a problem for others.

D) acted rather thoughtlessly.

The author didn't look after Peska carefully because

A) they both had been engaged in the peculiar English exercise.

B) foreigners were generally bathing not far from the shore.

C) the author was sure that Peska would learn swimming on the spot.

D) the author was sure that Peska was a very good swimmer.

Peska wanted to do the author some favour as

A) it was in his warm nature.

B) the author had saved his life.

C) the author was his best friend.

D) he wanted to look English.

Peska managed to

A) change the author’s life completely.

B) become English to the core.

C) meet a woman who later directed his life.

D) turn his existence into a new channel.

 

 

Pitcher, a confidential clerk in the office of Harvey Maxwell, allowed a look of mild interest and surprise when his employer briskly entered at half-past nine in company with a young lady. Miss Leslie had been Maxwell’s stenographer for a year. She was beautiful in a way that was decidedly unstenographic. On this morning she was softly and shyly radiant. Her eyes were dreamily bright, her expression a happy one, tinged with reminiscence. Pitcher, still mildly curious, noticed a difference in her ways this morning. Instead of going straight into the adjoining room, where her desk was, she stayed for a while, slightly irresolute, in the outer office. Once she moved over by Maxwell’s desk near enough for him to be aware of her presence.

The man sitting at that desk was no longer a man; it was a machine, moved by buzzing wheels and uncoiling springs.

“Well – what is it? Anything?” asked Maxwell sharply.

“Nothing,” answered the stenographer, moving away with a little smile.

This day was Harvey Maxwell’s busy day. Messenger boys ran in and out with messages and telegrams. Maxwell himself jumped from desk to door sweating. On the Exchange there were hurricanes and snowstorms and volcanoes, and those powerful disturbances were reproduced in miniature in Maxwell’s office. The rush and pace of business grew faster and fiercer. Share prices were falling and orders to sell them were coming and going and the man was working like some strong machine. Here was a world of finance, and there was no room in it for the human world or the world of nature.

When the luncheon hour came, Maxwell stood by his desk with a fountain pen over his right ear. His window was open. And through the window came a delicate, sweet smell of lilac that fixed the broker for a moment immovable. For this odour belonged to Miss Leslie; it was her own, and hers only. She was in the next room – twenty steps away.

“By George, I'll do it now,” said Maxwell half aloud. “ I’ll ask her now. I wonder why I didn’t do it long ago.” He dashed into the inner office and charged upon the desk of the stenographer. She looked at him with a smile.

“Miss Leslie,” he began hurriedly, “I have but a moment to spare. I want to say something in that moment. Will you be my wife? I haven’t had time to approach you in the ordinary way, but I really do love you.”

“Oh, what are you talking about?” exclaimed the young lady. She rose to her feet and gazed upon him, round-eyed.

“Don’t you understand?” said Maxwell. “I want you to marry me. I love you, Miss Leslie. I wanted to tell you, and I snatched a minute. They are calling me for the phone now. Tell them to wait a minute, Pitcher. Won’t you, Miss Leslie?”

The stenographer acted very strangely. She seemed overcome with amazement; then tears flowed from her wondering eyes; and then she smiled sunnily through them.

“I know now,” she said softly. “It is this old business that has driven everything else out of your head for the time. I was frightened at first. Don’t you remember, Harvey? We were married last evening at 8 o’clock in the Little Church Around the Corner.”

Harvey Maxwell was

A) a stenographer.

B) a clerk.

C) Pitcher’s boss.

D) Pitcher’s partner.

Because

A) it was a short distance from Queenstown.

B) they couldn’t find a room at other resorts.

C) somebody said that it was worth going to.

D) it was popular with snowboarders.

Feet were due to

A) his personal courage.

B) people’s encouragement.

C) his intensive practising.

D) pure chance.

Novel because Pushkin

A) didn’t like the true biographical facts he had discovered.

B) found it impossible to stick to the facts that were doubtful.

C) could not do without describing fictional events.

D) found the true facts of the slave’s biography uninspiring.

ABBY’S TIDY DRAWER

One Saturday morning, Abby’s Mum came upstairs to see Abby in her bedroom. There was a big mess on the floor and Abby sat in the middle of it all reading a book.

“What a mess,” Mum said. “You need to have a clear up in here. Because things get broken or lost when they’re all willy-nilly like this. Come on, have a tidy up now.”

“But I’m very busy,” Abby argued, “and it’s boring doing it on my own. Can’t you help me?”

“No I can’t, I’m busy too. But I’ll give you extra pocket money if you do a good job.”

When Mum came back later all the toys and clothes and books had disappeared.

“I’m impressed,” said Mum. “But I’ll inspect it properly later.”

“It was easy,” said Abby. “Can I have my extra pocket money now?”

“All right. Get it out of my change purse. It’s in the kitchen tidy drawer.”

In the kitchen, Abby went over to the dresser and pulled open the tidy drawer. She hunted for the purse.

“It must be somewhere at the bottom,” Mum said. “Let’s have a proper look.”

She pulled the drawer out and carried it over to the table. Abby looked inside. There were lots of boring things like staplers and string, but there were lots of interesting things as well.

“What’s this?” Abby asked, holding up a plastic bottle full of red liquid.

“Fake blood, from a Halloween party years ago. Your Dad and I took you to that, dressed up as a baby vampire. You were really scary.”

Abby carried on looking through the drawer. She found some vampire teeth, white face paint, plastic witch nails and hair gel. Mum pulled out a glittery hair band. It had springs with wobbly balls on the top that flashed disco colours! Abby found some sparkly hair elastics to match the hair band. She made her Mum put lots of little bunches all over her head so she looked really silly.

“I remember this,” Abby said as she pulled out a plastic bag. “This is from my pirate party.” Inside there was a black, false moustache and some big gold earrings.

“Come here,” Mum said and smeared white face paint all over Abby’s face. She dribbled the fake blood so it looked as if it was coming out of Abby’s eyes and mouth. She put gel all over Abby’s hair and made it stand up into weird, pointy shapes. Abby put in the vampire teeth and slipped on the witch fingers. She made scary noises at Wow-Wow, the cat. He ignored her and carried on washing himself on the seat next to her.

Abby came to sit on her Mum’s knee.

“It’s fun doing this together,” she said.

“Maybe. But we still haven’t found the change purse.”

“Well, you know things will get lost, or broken, when they’re all willy-nilly.”

“You cheeky monkey!” Mum laughed. “But what shall I do with it all?”

“I know, it’s easy,” Abby said and began to remove everything off the table into her arms. She put it all back in the kitchen drawer.

Mum looked at her suspiciously.

“Let’s go and inspect your bedroom, shall we?”

Abby followed her upstairs and into her bedroom. Wow-Wow was sitting in front of her fish tank looking hungrily at the goldfish. He dashed under the bed when he saw Mum and Abby. Mum kneeled down and lifted the bed cover to get him out. Underneath were heaps of Abby’s toys, books, tapes, clothes and shoes, empty plastic cups, wrappers and a half-eaten sandwich on a plate.

“Abby! What’s all this?”

“It’s my tidy drawer,” Abby said. She wrapped her arms around her Mum and gave her a kiss. “Let’s sort this one out together now.”

 

Mr. Sticky

No one knew how Mr. Sticky got in the fish tank.

"He's very small," Mum said as she peered at the tiny water snail. "Just a black dot."

In the morning Abby jumped out of bed and switched on the light in her fish tank.

Gerry, the fat orange goldfish, was dozing inside the stone archway. It took Abby a while to discover Mr. Sticky because he was clinging to the glass near the bottom, right next to the gravel.

At school that day she wrote about the mysterious Mr. Sticky who was so small you could mistake him for a piece of gravel. Some of the girls in her class said he seemed an ideal pet for her and kept giggling about it.

"I think he's grown a bit," Abby told her Mum at breakfast the next day.

"Just as well if he's going to be eaten up like that," her Mum said, trying to put on her coat and eat toast at the same time. "But I don't want him to get too huge or he won't be cute anymore. Small things are cute aren't they?"

"Yes they are. Now hurry up, I'm going to miss my train."

At the weekend they cleaned out the tank. "There's a lot of filth on the sides," Mum said. "I'm not sure Mr. Sticky's quite up to the job yet."

They took the fish out and put them in a bowl while they emptied some of the water. Mr. Sticky stayed out of the way, clinging to the glass while Mum used the special 'vacuum cleaner' to clean the gravel. Abby cleaned the archway and the filter tube. Mum poured new water into the tank.

"Where's Mr. Sticky?" Abby asked.

"On the side," Mum said. She was busy concentrating on the water.

Abby looked on all sides of the tank. There was no sign of the water snail.

"He's probably in the gravel then," her mum said. She put the fish back in the clean water where they swam round and round, looking baffled.

That evening Abby went up to her bedroom to examine the tank. The water had settled and looked lovely and clear but there was no sign of Mr. Sticky. She went downstairs.

Her mum was in the study surrounded by papers. She looked impatient when she saw Abby in the doorway and even more impatient when she heard the bad news.

"He'll turn up." was all she said. "Now off to bed Abby. I've got masses of work to catch up on."

Abby felt her face go hot and red. It always happened when she was furious or offended.

"You've poured him out, haven't you," she said. "You were in such a rush."

"I have not. I was very cautious. But he is extremely small."

"What's wrong with being small?"

"Nothing at all. But it makes things hard to find."

"Or notice," Abby said and ran from the room.

The door to the bedroom opened and Mum's face appeared. Abby tried to ignore her but it was hard when she walked over to the bed and sat next to her. She was holding her glasses in her hand. "These are my new pair," she said. "Extra powerful, for snail hunting." She smiled at Abby. Abby tried not to smile back.

"And I've got a magnifying glass," Abby suddenly remembered and rushed off to find it.

They sat beside each other on the floor with the tank between them and peered into the water.

"Ah ha!" Mum suddenly cried.

There, perfectly hidden against the dark stone, sat Mr. Sticky. And right next to him was another water snail, even smaller than him.

"Mrs. Sticky!" Abby breathed.

They both laughed. Then Abby put her head on her mum's chest and smiled.

 

Mr. Sticky was

A) a goldfish.

B) a piece of gravel.

C) a snail.

D) a turtle.

A Gifted Cook

If there is a gene for cuisine, Gabe, my 11-year-old son, could splice it to perfection. Somewhere between Greenwich Village, where he was born, and the San Francisco Bay area, where he has grown up, the little kid with the stubborn disposition and freckles on his nose has forsaken Boy Scouts and baseball in favor of wielding a kitchen knife.

I suppose he is a member of the Emeril generation. Gabe has spent his formative years shopping at the Berkeley Bowl, where over half a dozen varieties of Thanksgiving yams, in lesser mortals, can instill emotional paralysis. He is blessed with a critical eye. “I think Emeril is really cheesy,” he observed the other night while watching a puff pastry segment. “He makes the stupidest jokes. But he cooks really well.”

With its manifold indigenous cultures, Oaxaca seemed the perfect place to push boundaries. Like the mole sauces for which it is justly famous, the region itself is a subtle blend of ingredients – from dusty Zapotec villages where Spanish is a second language to the zocalo in colonial Oaxaca, a sophisticated town square brimming with street life and vendors selling twisty, one-story-tall balloons.

Appealing to Gabe’s inner Iron Chef seemed like an indirect way to introduce him to a place where the artful approach to life presides. There was also a selfish motive: Gabe is my soul mate, a fellow food wanderer who is not above embracing insanity to follow his appetite wherever it leads.

Months ahead of time, we enrolled via the Internet in the daylong Wednesday cooking class at Seasons of My Heart, the chef and cookbook author Susana Trilling’s cooking school in the Elta Valley, about a 45-minute drive north to town. In her cookbook and PBS series of the same name, Ms. Trilling, an American whose maternal grandparents were Mexican, calls Oaxaca “the land of no waste” where cooking techniques in some ancient villages have endured for a thousand years.

I suspected that the very notion of what constitutes food in Oaxaca would test Gabe’s mettle. At the suggestion of Jacob, his older brother, we spent our second night in Mexico at a Oaxaca Guerrero baseball game, where instead of peanuts and Cracker Jack, vendors hawked huge trays piled high with chapulines, fried grasshoppers cooked in chili and lime, a local delicacy. Gabe was bug-eyed as he watched the man next to him snack on exoskeletal munchies in a paper bowl. “It’s probably less gross than a hot dog,” he admitted. “But on the rim of the bowl I saw a bunch of legs and served body parts. That’s revolting!”

Our cooking day began at the Wednesday market in Etla, shopping for ingredients and sampling as we went. On the way in the van, Gabe had made friends with Cindy and Fred Beams, fellow classmates from Boston, sharing opinions about Caesar salad and bemoaning his brother’s preference for plain pizza instead of Hawaiian. Cindy told Gabe about a delicious sauce she’d just had on her omelet at her B & B. “It was the best sauce – to die for,” she said. “Then I found out the provenance. Roasted worms.”

The Oaxacan taste for insects, we’d learn – including the worm salt spied at the supermarket and the “basket of fried locusts” at a nearby restaurant – was a source of protein dating back to pre-Hispanic times.

When our cooking class was over I saw a flicker of regret in his face, as though he sensed the world’s infinite variety and possibilities in all the dishes he didn’t learn to cook. “Mom”, he said plaintively, surveying the sensual offerings of the table. “Can we make everything when we get home?”

 

Gabe was struck when he

A) was told that local cooking techniques were a thousand years old.

B) saw the man next to him eat insects.

C) did not find any dish to satisfy his appetite.

D) understood that a hot dog was less gross than a local delicacy.

A School Story

 

It happened at my private school thirty odd years ago, and I still can't explain it. I came to that school in September and among the boys who arrived on the same day was one whom I took to. I will call him McLeod. The school was a large one: there must have been from 120 to 130 boys there as a rule, and so a considerable staff of masters was required. One term a new master made his appearance. His name was Sampson. He was a tall, well-built, pale, black-bearded man. I think we liked him. He had travelled a good deal, and had stories which amused us on our school walks, so that there was some competition among us to get a chance to listen to him.
Well, the first odd thing that happened was this. Sampson was doing Latin grammar with us. One of his favourite methods was to make us construct sentences out of our own heads to illustrate the rules he was trying to teach us. Now, on this occasion he ordered us each to make a sentence bringing in the verb memini, 'I remember.' Well, most of us made up some ordinary sentence such as 'I remember my father,' but the boy I mentioned - McLeod - was evidently thinking of something more interesting than that. Finally, very quickly he wrote a couple of lines on his paper, and showed it up with the rest. The phrase was "Remember the lake among the four oaks." Later McLeod told me that it had just come into his head. When Sampson read it he got up and went to the mantel-piece and stopped quite a long time without saying anything looking really embarrassed. Then he wanted to know why McLeod had put it down, and where his family lived, and if there was such a lake there, and things like that.
There was one other incident of the same kind. We were told to make a conditional sentence, expressing a future consequence. We did it and showed up our bits of paper, and Sampson began looking through them. All at once he got up, made some odd sort of noise in his throat, and rushed out. I noticed that he hadn't taken any of the papers with him, so we went to look at them on his desk. The top paper on the desk was written in red ink - which no one used - and it wasn't in anyone's handwriting who was in the class. I questioned everyone myself! Then I thought of counting the bits of paper: there were seventeen of them on the desk, and sixteen boys in the form. I put the extra paper in my bag and kept it. The phrase on it was simple and harmless enough: 'If you don't come to me, I'll come to you.' That same afternoon I took it out of my bag - I know for certain it was the same bit of paper, for I made a finger-mark on it - and there was no single piece of writing on it!
The next day Sampson was in school again, much as usual. That night the third and last incident in my story happened. We - McLeod and I - slept in a bedroom the windows of which looked out at the main building of the school. Sampson slept in the main building on the first floor. At an hour which I can't remember exactly, but some time between one and two, I was woken up by somebody shaking me. I saw McLeod in the light of the moon which was looking right into our windows. 'Come,' he said, - 'come, there's someone getting in through Sampson's window. About five minutes before I woke you, I found myself looking out of this window here, and there was a man sitting on Sampson's window-sill, and looking in.' 'What sort of man? Is anyone from the senior class going to play a trick on him? Or was it a burglar?!' McLeod seemed unwilling to answer. 'I don't know,' he said, 'but I can tell you one thing - he was as thin as a rail: and water was running down his hair and clothing and,' he said, looking round and whispering as if he hardly liked to hear himself, 'I'm not at all sure that he was alive.' Naturally I came and looked, and naturally there was no one there.
And next day Mr. Sampson was gone: not to be found, and I believe no trace of him has ever come to light since. Neither McLeod nor I ever mentioned what we had seen to anyone. We seemed unable to speak about it. We both felt strange horror which neither could explain.

First Train Trip

 

I must have been about eight when I made my first train trip. I think I was in second grade at that time. It was midsummer, hot and wet in central Kansas, and time for my aunt Winnie’s annual vacation from the store, where she worked as a clerk six days a week. She invited me to join her on a trip to Pittsburgh, fifty miles away, to see her sister, my aunt Alice. "Sally, would you like to go there by train or by car?" aunt Winnie asked. "Oh, please, by train, aunt Winnie, dear! We’ve been there by car three times already!"
Alice was one of my favourite relatives and I was delighted to be invited to her house. As I was the youngest niece in Mother’s big family, the aunties all tended to spoil me and Alice was no exception. She kept a boarding house for college students, a two-storey, brown brick building with comfortable, nicely decorated rooms at the corner of 1200 Kearney Avenue. She was also a world-class cook, which kept her boarding house full of young people. It seemed to me that their life was so exciting and joyful.
Since I’d never ridden a train before, I became more and more excited as the magic day drew near. I kept questioning Mother about train travel, but she just said, "Wait. You’ll see." For an eight-year-old, waiting was really difficult, but finally the big day arrived. Mother had helped me pack the night before, and my little suitcase was full with summer sundresses, shorts and blouses, underwear and pyjamas. I was reading Billy Whiskers, a fantastic story about a goat that once made a train trip to New York, and I had put that in as well. It was almost midnight when I could go to bed at last.
We arrived at the station early, purchased our tickets and found our car. I was fascinated by the face-to-face seats so some passengers could ride backwards. Why would anyone, I thought, want to see where they’d been? I only wanted to see what lay ahead for me.
Finally, the conductor shouted, "All aboard!" to the people on the platform. They climbed into the cars, the engineer blew the whistle and clanged the bell, and we pulled out of the station.
This train stopped at every town between my home in Solomon and Pittsburgh. It was known as the "milk train" because at one time it had delivered goods as well as passengers to these villages. I looked eagerly at the signs at each station. I’d been through all these towns by car, but this was different. The shaky ride of the coaches, the soft brown plush seats, the smells of the engine drifting back down the track and in through the open windows made this trip far more exotic.
The conductor, with his black uniform and shiny hat, the twinkling signals that told the engineer when to stop and go, thrilled me. To an adult, the trip must have seemed painfully slow, but I enjoyed every minute.
Aunt Winnie had packed a lunch for us to eat along the way as there was no dining car in the train. I was dying to know just what was in that big shopping bag she carried, but she, too, said, "Wait. You’ll see." Midway, Aunt Winnie pulled down her shopping bag from the luggage rack above our seats. My eyes widened as she opened it and began to take out its contents. I had expected lunchmeat sandwiches, but instead there was a container of fried chicken, two hardboiled eggs, bread and butter wrapped in waxed paper, crisp radishes and slim green onions from Winnie’s garden, as well as rosy sliced tomatoes. She had brought paper plates, paper cups and some of the "everyday" silverware. A large bottle of cold tea was well wrapped in a dishtowel; the ice had melted, but it was still chilly. I cautiously balanced my plate on my knees and ate, wiping my lips and fingers with a large paper napkin. This was living!
When we had cleaned our plates, Aunt Winnie looked into the bag one more time. The best treat of all appeared – homemade chocolate cakes! Another cup of cold tea washed these down and then we carefully returned the remains of the food and silverware to the bag, which Aunt Winnie put into the corner by her feet.
"Almost there," said my aunt, looking out of the window at the scenery passing by. And sure enough, as we pulled into the Pittsburgh station we immediately caught sight of aunt Alice, waiting for us, a smile like the sun lighting up her face, arms wide open. We got off the train and she led us past the taxi rank and the bus stop to her car that was parked near the station. And all the way to her home she was asking about my impressions of my first train trip and I could hardly find the words to express all the thrill and excitement that filled me.

Sisters

 

“Dear Kathy! Chance made us sisters, hearts made us friends.” This quote is at the center of a collage of photographs – covering our twenty-something years – that now hangs in my office. My sister, Susie, made it for me as a wedding present. It probably cost very little to make (she is a starving college student, after all), but it means more to me than any of the more “traditional” wedding presents my husband and I received from family and friends last June. Whenever I look at the collage, it reminds me of my sister and what a true friend she is.
Susie and I weren’t always close friends. Far from it, in fact. We shared a room for nearly fifteen years when we were younger, and at the time I thought I couldn’t have asked for a worse roommate. She was always around! If we argued and I wanted to go to my room to be alone, she’d follow me right in. If I told her to go away, she’d say right back, “It’s my room, too! And I can be here if I want to.” I’d consult my mother and she usually agreed with Susie. I suppose being three years younger has its benefits.
When we were kids, she’d “borrow” my dolls without asking. (And no toy was safe in her hands.) When we got older, Susie quit borrowing my toys and started borrowing my clothes. That was the final straw. I couldn’t take it anymore. I begged my parents to let me have a room of my own – preferably one with a lock on the door. The answer was always a resounding “no.” “Please?!” I’d beg. My parents would just shake their heads. They didn’t agree with each other on much, but for some reason they had a united front on this issue.
To crown it all, she had this habit of doing everything I did. Choirs, rock bands, sports teams, dance studios: There was no place where I was safe. “She looks up to you,” my mom would say. I didn’t care. I just wanted a piece of my life that didn’t involve my little sister. When I complained to my mother, she’d just smile and say, “One day you’ll want her around.” Sure.
It’s strange how mothers have this habit of being right about everything. When I was sixteen and my sister was thirteen, we went through a series of life-changing events together that would forever change our relationship. First, my parents announced that they were divorcing. My dad packed up and moved to an apartment in New Hampshire – more than a half hour drive away from our cozy house in Massachusetts. He bought me my first car and I often went with Susie to his place when we missed him a lot. During those trips we started discussing our troubles and making plans about how to reunite the family again. But a year later, our father met his future second wife and moved again; this time to Indiana. This meant we could only see him once or twice a year, as opposed to once every few weeks. That was hard.
Yet those few months changed my relationship with my sister forever. We started having more heart-to-heart talks as opposed to silly fights. Over time, she became my most cherished friend. It’s not uncommon for us to have three-hour-long telephone conversations about everything or about nothing--just laughing over memories from childhood or high school.
She’s the only person who’s been through all of the tough stuff that I’ve been through, and the only person who truly understands me. Susie and I have shared so much. She’s been my roommate, my friend, and my partner in crime. We’ve done plays together, gone to amusement parks, sang, and taken long road trips together. We’ve laughed until our sides hurt, and wiped away each others’ tears.
Even though distance separates us now, we’re closer than ever. Sisters share a special bond. They’ve seen all of your most embarrassing moments. They know your deepest, darkest secrets. Most importantly, they love you unconditionally. I’m lucky to be able to say that my little sister is my best friend. I only wish everyone could be so fortunate.

To Become Wealthy

 

As a kid, I always wanted to become wealthy. I knew if I could achieve this, I would be able to consider myself successful. At the time, I had no worries and felt my happiness would be based on whether I could fulfill all my needs and wants. My simple philosophy of that time was if I was rich, I would definitely be content with my life.
My father always stressed his belief that happiness includes much more than money. I can remember him lecturing me about how money does not make an individual happy; other things in life such as: health, family, friends, and memorable experiences make a person genuinely happy. At this time in my life, I took what my dad said for granted and did not give any thought to his words. All I could see was the great life my cousins had because they had everything a kid ever dreamed of.
At a young age, I noticed society was extremely materialistic. The media seemed to portray the wealthy as happy people who add value to our society. My opinions did not change; in high school I still sought a career that would eventually yield a high salary. I still felt that the possibility of living life from paycheck to paycheck would automatically translate into my unhappiness. However, things changed when I decided to take an internship in the accounting department for the summer after my second year of college.
Starting the first day on the job in the accounting department, I found myself extremely bored. I was forced to do monotonous work, such as audit eight thousand travel and expense reports for a potential duplicate. In addition, I had to relocate away from friends and family in order to accept the position. I was earning the money I always wanted; however, I noticed that having money to spend when you are by yourself was not satisfying.
I began to think back to what my dad always said. After a few months in the job, I truly realized that money does not bring happiness. A more satisfying experience for me would have been doing an ordinary summer job for far less money. For me to understand that concept, it took an experience as painful as this one. I often contemplated how much money it would take me to do this as my everyday job. I concluded, whatever the salary for this position I would never be capable of fulfilling a happy life and making a career out of this job.
As I looked forward to the summer to draw to a close, I truly comprehended the meaning of my dad’s words. Contrary to my prior beliefs, I firmly believe through experience that money cannot make a person happy. The term “wealth” is a broad term, and I believe the key to happiness is to become wealthy in great memories, friends, family, and health. This I believe.

The narrator believes that

А) it is impossible to interpret good writers.

B) interpreting is collective intellectual work.

C) authorities in interpreting will appear in future.

D) one should find a proper interpretation by oneself.

 

The narrator believes that

А) a lot of people in the world need help.

B) it is impossible to make the world better.

C) people in the world have too many needs.

D) the computer is the only way to improve the world.

In Mollie's opinion a good book should

А) be attractive to a wide audience.

B) be attractive primarily to youngsters.

C) be based on original ideas.

D) include a lot of description.

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