A salt seller used to carry big bags of salt on his donkey’s back as he made his way to the market every day.

On the way there, they had to cross a river. One day, the donkey took a sudden fall into the river. The big bags of salt also fell into the water. The salt seller didn’t notice, but some of the salt dissolved( 溶解) in the water, making the bags much lighter to carry. The donkey realized this and felt much more comfortable on his way to the market.

The next day, the donkey did the same thing, except this time, he fell in the water on purpose. Again, the bags were lighter and easier to carry.

The salt seller soon found out what was going on and decided to teach his donkey a lesson. The next day, he put two big bags of cotton on the donkey’s back. Again the donkey played the same trick, hoping that the bags would become even lighter.

But the cotton that tell into the water instead became very heavy to carry. The donkey learned a lesion and didn’t play this trick any more after that day.

Sometimes, we might feel tempted (有诱惑力的) to take shortcuts (捷径) or cheat when we have a lot of hard work to do. However, taking shortcuts and cheating will often come back to harm us later. It is better to simply work honestly.

It was raining, but thousands of people were still running the marathon. The annual Toronto Marathon was on May 1st and it interested more than 14,000 runners worldwide. And 【小题1】.

I got there at 6:30 in the morning to help set up a station. Volunteers filled up water in cups and passed them to the runners. As the runners were in a hurry, they would just throw the cups on the ground. So 【小题2】. When I did that, so many people said “thank you”. I felt warm even though it was raining and very cold. But when I was picking up cups, a runner threw a cup at me, 【小题3】, then I thought he might have just been trying to do me a favor.

After I worked for about an hour, 【小题4】. I kept on picking up cups, but I didn’t feel tired at all. It was probably because all the runners were so energetic and excited. They encouraged me. I learned a lot from volunteering. I know that we should always think about things from another person’s perspective. Maybe what you saw is not what people actually wanted to do. Furthermore, we need to exercise more to keep fit. 【小题5】. Let’s enjoy it and join it.