In the sea there are many islands. In its warm water there are some little ones. We call them “coral Islands” (珊瑚岛).

A coral island is very nice to look at. It looks like a ring of land(一圈陆地) with trees, grass, and flowers on it. One part of the ring is open to the water. There is a little round lake inside the island.

If you look into this lake, you will see beautiful coral. You may think they are flowers. If you look at a piece of coral, you will see many little holes in it. In each of these holes a very small sea animal lives. These sea animals make the coral.

They began to build under the water. Year after year, the coral grew higher and higher. At last it grew out of the water.

Then the sea brought it small trees and something else. After some years, these things changed into earth. Sometimes the wind brought seeds(种子) to this earth. Sometimes birds flew over it and brought seeds to the island.

The little seeds grew. In a few years there were plants all over the island. In a few more years there were trees growing there.

So you see, these islands were built little by little. The workers were very small. Do they not teach us a lesson? Can you think what the lesson is?

Once there was a boy. He loved sweets very much. He always asked his father for sweets.

The boy's father thought hard about how to stop the child from asking for so many sweets. A great man lived nearby. The boy's father decided to take the boy to him. He might be able to make the child give up sweets.

So they went to the great man. The father asked the great man to help him. But the great man liked sweets himself. He told the father to bring his son back after a month.

During the month, the great man tried to give up eating sweets. At last he did it. When the boy and his father returned after a month, the great man had a talk with the boy. From then on, the boy did not ask for sweets any more.

The boy's father felt surprised, “Why didn't you ask my son to give up sweets when we came to you a month ago?” The man answered, “How could I ask a boy to give up sweets when I loved sweets myself? In the last month I gave up eating sweets. ”

A person's example is always stronger than words. We should not ask others to do what we can't do ourselves.

One day, our teacher said that he had an exercise for us to try. We were asked to stand, facing away from our classmates, and fall backward, relying on（依赖）another student to catch us. Most of us were uncomfortable with this. We couldn't fall back for more than a few inches before stopping ourselves.

Finally, Judy stood up. She is a thin, quiet, dark-haired girl who always wears big, white fisherman sweaters. Judy crossed her arms over her chest, closed her eyes, leaned back, and did not flinch（退缩）. She looked like one of those Lipton tea commercials (广告)where the model jumps into the pool.

For a moment, I was sure she was going to thump（重重砸） on the floor. At the last moment, her partner caught her head and shoulders and pulled her up immediately. Wow! several students yelled. Some clapped their hands. Our teacher finally smiled. “You see,” he said to the girl, “you closed your eyes. That was the difference. Sometimes you cannot believe what you see. You have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them too-even when you're in the dark. Even when you're falling.”