In 1872, Phileas Fogg, an English gentleman, bets 20,000 pounds that he can travel around the world in 80 days. Remember, there were no airplanes or other types of high speed travel.

　　Fogg and his servant, Passepourtout, leave from London, England and travel acrofour continents on their trip. In India, they meet a beautiful princeand save her life. She joins them on the journey and falls in love with Phileas Fogg.

　　They are followed around the world by Detective Fix, who has mistaken Fogg for a bank robber. He causes the group lots of trouble and delays, and finally arrests Fogg on the last day of the journey.

　　The trip was also delayed by storms at sea, unfinished railroad tracks, and an Indian attack in the American West.

　　Do you think Phileas Fogg and his friends made it around the world in 80 days?

　　With all of the delays, the group thought they arrived back at London five minutes too late. However, the next day they discovered they were one day ahead of schedule. This was because they had travelled all the way around the world in an eastward direction, ma-ki-ng them gain an extra day as they travelled acrodifferent time zones.

　　Oliver Twist, one of the most famous works of Charles Dickens’, is a novel reflecting the tragic fact of the life in Britain in 18th century.

　　The author who himself was born in a poor family wrote this novel in his twenties with a view to reveal the ugly masks of those cruel criminals and to expose the horror and violence hidden underneath the narrow and dirty streets in London.

　　The hero of this novel was Oliver Twist, an orphan, who was thrown into a world full of poverty and crime. He suffered enormous pain, such as hunger, thirst, beating and abuse. While reading the tragic experiences of the little Oliver, I was shocked by his sufferings. I felt for the poor boy, but at the same time I detested the evil Fagin and the brutal Bill. To my relief, as was written in all the best stories, the goodneeventually conquered devil and Oliver lived a happy life in the end. One of the plots that attracted me most is that after the theft, little Oliver was allowed to recover in the kind care of Mrs. Maylie and Rose and began a new life. He went for walks with them, or Rose read to him, and he worked hard at his lessons. He felt as if he had left behind forever the world of crime and hardship and poverty.

　　How can such a little boy who had already suffered oppressive affliction remain pure in body and mind? The reason is the nature of goodness. I think it is the most important information implied in the novel by Dickens-he believed that goodnecould conquer every difficulty. Although I don’t think goodneis omnipotent, yet I do believe that those who are kind-hearted live more happily than those who are evil-minded.

　　For me, the nature of goodneis one of the most necessary character for a person. Goodneis to humans what water is to fish. He who is without goodneis an utterly worthleperson. On the contrary, as the famous saying goes, ‘The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose’, he who is with goodneundoubtedly is a happy and useful person. People receiving his help are grateful to him and he also gets gratified from what he has done, and thus he can do good to both the people he has helped and himself.

　　To my disappointment, nowadays some people seem to doubt the existence of the goodnein humanity. They look down on people’s honesty and kindness, thinking it foolish of people to be warm-hearted. As a result, they show no sympathy to those who are in trouble and seldom offer to help others. On the other hand, they attach importance to money and benefit. In their opinion, money is the only real object while emotions and morality are nihility. If they cannot get profit from showing their ‘kindness’, they draw back when others are faced with trouble and even hit a man when he is down. They are one of the sorts that I really detest.

　　Francis Bacon said in his essay, ‘Goodness, of all virtues and dignities of the mind, is the greatest, being the character of the Deity, and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing, no better than a kind of vermin.’

　　That is to say a person without goodneis destined to lose everything. Therefore, I, a kind person, want to tell those ‘vermin-to-be’ to learn from the kind Oliver and regain the nature of goodness.