I attended my 35th high school reunion recently. It was held at the 4-H camp that I _______ next to as a child. When I got there the very first thing I _______ was the little Oak trees that I used to climb up as a boy now seemed as tall as Redwoods. _______ had that happened?

I had arrived early so I _______ to help get things set up. I _______ some chairs around the tables and then got drafted to blow up the party balloons. For some reason my aging _______ couldn’t seem to get my balloons quite as _______ as my friend’s, who was helping me out.

As I started to talk to my _______ high school friends I noticed something else too. We all looked a little _______. There was some with gray hair. And we all seemed to have a few extra ________ and a few extra wrinkles. Yet, the moment we started to talk and catch up the years melted away, our ________ souls shined through. On the outside we all seemed a little wiser and more mature, but on the ________ every single one of us was bright, beautiful, and energetic. 35 years may have ________ our bodies a bit, ________ it hadn’t had any effect whatever on our souls. Our souls are created in Love. And Love ________ ages. Love is both unfading and forever young.

He’s an old cobbler (修鞋匠) with a shop in Paris. When I took him my shoes, he at first told me: “I have no _______. Take them to the other fellow on the main street; he’ll _______ them for you right away.”

But I’d had my _______ on his shop for a long time, and knew he was a (an) _______ craftsman (手艺人). “No,” I _______, “the other fellow can’t do it well.”

“The other fellow” was one of those _______ who fix shoes “while-U-wait” — without _______much about mending shoes.

My man saw I wouldn’t _______, and he smiled. He looked at my shoes, had me write my name on one _______ with a piece of chalk and said, “________ in a week.”

I was about to leave ________ he took a pair of soft leather boots off a shelf.

“See what I can do?” he said with ________. “In Paris, only three of us can do this kind of ________.”

When I got back out into the street, the world seemed ________ to me. He was something ________an ancient legend (传说), this old craftsman with his way of speaking familiarly, his very strange hat, his funny accent from who-knows-where and, ________, his pride in his craft.

These are times when you can do things any old way as long as it “________”, when, in short, most people merely look on work as a ________ to make money rather than a way to realize their own ________. In such a period it is a rare comfort to find a cobbler who gets his greatest ________ from pride in a job well done.

It has been another long, rough winter here in the mountains of my home. And today as I looked at the broken ________ littering my yard it brought back ________ from another rough winter several years ago.

A foot of snow had fallen and was rapidly melting. The ________ from the hills had swollen the rivers, filled the ditches and ________ puddles(小水洼)in the road. In addition to this broken and fallen tree branches were everywhere. I was ________ home and suddenly saw one of these branches had broken off a tree overhanging the ________ and fallen across it. It was big enough to damage my car if I didn’t stop in time so I ________ on the brake and hit my emergency flashers.

I got out of my car ________ and tried to pull the branch to the side of the road. This branch was a lot ________ than I thought it would be. Inch by inch I ________ it off the road. When it was finally safely moved to the side I________ and smiled. Just then a little red car raced around the curve(弯道), ________ a pool of water in the road and splashed my pants. I shook my head and laughed at the ________ of it all.

Sometimes we all do good things in this life only to get ________ with dirty water for our kindness. When this happens just remember that the real reason you do good is because of the ________ inside of you.