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1、On a winter holiday with his mother, eleven year old Jerry discovers a secret tunnel which passes from one side of a massive rock formation to the other side, many feet below the surface of the ocean. After observing some native boys with through the tunnel, Jerry is compelled to try it himself. It
2、is a very difficult and dangerous swim, but something Jerry is convinced he must do. Putting himself in great danger, he managers to accomplish this goal and, in doing so, takes his first step in becoming a man. It brings us into touch with our own private courage and the need we all have to separat
3、ing ourselves from our parents so we can more clearly understand ourselves.The authors family falls into heavy financial crisis after his father died. So they have to sell the pony, like one of the family and none of them want to part with, to the ragman. So they call the ragman and the authors moth
4、er accepts the offer after some skirmish. After founding the ragman not taking care of pony, the authors mother decides to give Dando the old piano to have the pony back. A few days gone, none of them mind very much about losing the piano expect the anchors mother. She cant resist the strong yearnin
5、gs towards the old piano; she imperatively wants to know whether Dando uses it properly.The narrator hears a strange sound downstairs in the middle of the night. He assumes that it is a ghost, but his mother calls the police. When the narrators grandfather makes a slight noise in the attic, the poli
6、cemen spring into action and investigate. When the policemen arrive at his door, he is convinced that they are Meades army and takes the policemans gun and shoots at him, hitting him in the shoulder. The police are upset that there is nobody to arrest, but they are not willing to go back to the atti
7、c and risk being shot at again.At last, they find out the ghost is his grandfather but he doesnt know the accident at all.Monsieur Daron, an eighty-six-year-old-man, comes to live at the new spa in Rondelis. He believes himself to be in excellent health, as a result of “careful living.“ He has alway
8、s had “an obsessive fear of death,“ and avoids all pleasure because of its dangerous.In order to measure and monitor his own condition, he lets the doctor in charge of the springs to visit him once a week with information on the health of everyone else in the surrounding area who is over the age of
9、eighty. When he hears that someone has died, he quickly identifies a cause that might have been avoided; the man who died of pleurisy should not have gone out in the cold, and the one who died of dysentery must have eaten the wrong food.Eventually, though, one old man dies for no apparent reason. Th
10、e doctor can report no lesion, no disease: “He died because he died, thats all.“ M. Daron is horrified and asks the mans age. Eighty-nine. He laughs in relief, saying, “Whatever it was, it wasnt old age . . . .“In order to pull off a fraudulent town lot scheme, Bill and Sam kidnap the son of an impo
11、rtant citizen named Ebenezer Dorset and demand a ransom of $2,000. However, their young captive, a malevolent, redheaded brat who calls himself Red Chief, actually enjoys his stay with his kidnappers, and thinks he is on a camping trip and demands that they play wearing games with him.After knowing
12、perfectly well what a handful Red Chief is, Bill and Same are soon desperate to be rid of the little terror. They have to give up the ransom and offers to take the boys back off their hands for $250 at last.When the men bring Red Chief to his home, he does not want to leave, loudly protesting that he was having fun “playing“ with them, which makes kidnappers flee in terror.
