Although Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee were fierce adversaries during the Civil War，their lives，both military and nonmilitary，has a great deal in common. Grant descended from a family whose members participated in the American Revolution. He received his commission of second lieutenant from West Point and served in the Spanish-American War. He was later summoned by President Lincoln to assume command of the Union Forces during the Civil War.After the Civil War，Grant suffered financial problems and was forced to declare bankruptcy. Lee also descended from a family which engaged in the American Revolution. He，too，received his commission from West Point and later fought in Mexico during the Spanish-American War. His fame as a military strategist during the Civil War，when he was the commander of the Confederate armies，is well known. Although it is not always pointed out by historians he，like Grant，had financial difficulties after the civil War and was compelled to out by historians he，like Grant，had financial difficulties after the civil War and was compelled todeclare bankruptcy. By securing a post as president of Washington College，he was able to avoid additional poverty.The television western of several years ago differs greatly from the western of today. Ten years ago, for example, the swindler or bank robber in a western could be identified not by the crimes he committed so much as by the color of the clothing he wore--which was black.Today the television western reveals the villain by mannerisms and personality. At one time, every western had a superhuman, invincible "good guy" with whom the viewers could identify because he too lived out on the farm. Currently, the central figures of the western are average people who may live on a middleclass street in any part of the country. They are characters like the bus drivers, mailclerks and accountants who live next door to you in suburbia. At night they come in off the horses to ride the television range. They become parsons who respect otbers, drink and smoke only just a bit, and are able not only to outshoot the "bad guy", but also to outsmart him with good common sense.--Ron SeugalThere is an essential difference between a news story, as understood by a newspaperman or a wire-service writer, and the newsmagazine story. The chief purpose of the conventional news story is to tell what happened. It starts with the most important information and continues into increasingly inconsequential details, not only because the reader may not read beyond the first paragraph but because an editor working on galley proofs a few minutes before press time likes to be able to cut freely from the end of the story. A news magazine is very different. It is written to be read consecutively from beginning to end, and each of its stories is designed, following the critical theories of Edgar Allen Poe, to create an emotional effect. The news, what happened that week, may be told in the beginning, the middle, or the end; for the purpose is not to throw information at the reader but to seduce him into reading the whole story, and into accepting the dramatic (and often political ) point being made.Electricity is transferred from one place to another in much the same manner as water. A water pipe performs the same function as a length of wire. The pipe carries water to its point of use in the same manner as wire carries electricity to its point of use. A blown fuse results from the same thing as a burst water pipe. Both give out due to extreme pressure applied to the walls of the carrier. A switch is to electricity what a faucet is to water. Both of them control the flow of thesubstance. Since electricity and water have some common properties, understanding the job of the plumber will help understanding the work of the electrician.--John BrowerSome old people are oppressed by the fear of death…The best way to overcome it-so at least it seems to me-is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river-small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue…--Bertrand RussellOne might wonder why, after the Norman Conquest, French did not become the national language, replacing English entirely. The reason is that the Conquest was not a national migration, as the earlier Anglo-Saxon invasion has been. Great numbers of Normans came into England, but they came as rulers and landlords. French became the language of the court, the language of the nobility, the language of the public society, the language of literature. But it did not replace English as the language of the people. There must always have been hundreds if towns and villages in which French was never heard except when visitors of high station passed through.--Paul RobertsThe surge of demand for oil will soon begin to send shock waves through the American economy and transportation system. The impact of these tremors can already be anticipated: to the consumer they signal the end of a long love affair with the car, and to Detroit they offer an early warning that its 1985 growth aims are dangerously unrealistic. Unless we exercise foresight and devise growth-limits policies for the auto industry, events will thrust us into a crisis that will lead to a substantial erosion of domestic oil supply as well as the independence it provides us with, and a level of petroleum imports that could cost as much as $20 to $30 billion per year. Moreover, we would still be depleting our remaining oil reserves at an unacceptable rate, and scrambling for petroleum substitutes, with enormous potential damage to the environment.According to Xiao Li, the fifteen students of his class fall into three groups. Seven of them work hard and study well. They always get good marks in exami nations and are often praised by the teachers. Li calls them “good students”. The monitor, the secretary of the Youth League branch, and the captain of the class volleyball team, are quick in finding out whattheir fellow students are interested in or what they should do as a collective. They always organize proper activities at the proper time, so Li calls them “good organizers”. Four other students are very kind to their classmates, always ready to lend them a helping hand. They help to clean the classroom and the corridor even when they are not on duty. Li says that they are “good fellows”. “What about yourself?” someone asks him. “I’m a group by myself—a good observer.”Every educated person has at least two ways of speaking his mother tongue. The first is that which he employs in his family, among his familiar friends, and on ordinary occasions. The second is that which he uses in discoursing on more complicated subjects, and in addressing persons with whom he is less intimately acquainted. It is, in short, the language which he employs when he is "on his dignity," as he puts on evening dress when he is going to dine.--J. B. Greenongh and G. L. KittredgeKin-tay often told Kizzy stories about himself. He said that he had been near his village in Africa, chopping wood to make a drum, when he had been set upon by four men, overwhelmed, and kidnapped into slavery. When Kizzy grew up and became a mother, she told her son these stories, and he in turn would tell his children. His granddaughter became my grandmother, and she pumped that saga into me as if it were plasma, until I knew by rote the story of the African, and the subsequent generational wending of our family through cotton and tobacco plantations into the Civil War and then freedom.--Alex Haley我们可以明显看到：作者在上一段里使用了两种写作方法，即按时间展开法与按原因和结果展开法。