All phrases of mere compliment have their turn to be true. A man is occasionally grateful when he says, “Thank you.” How many days you teach us painstakingly and cultivate silently. You ignite the light of hope for us and enlighten my soul and wisdom. You will be in my heart forever. The clouds are still moving on and on. Your voice still rises and falls. Although today is your holiday, you still assiduously cultivate in your field. Oh, please accept my highest respects. After many years, whom I will see most in my dream, perhaps is you. After many years, whom I will talk about most, perhaps is still you.  Whether daytime or night, I will cherish the burning sunlight you give me, I will be proud of this collection. I recalled you when I fell; you pushed cowardice off me and sowed hope for me. You are my idol forever. Without your painstaking cultivation and dedication, how else could wisdom bloom so gorgeously?

Weather I stay with you or go to the ends of the World, I will look for you. I will contribute the vivid dreams of yesterday and the freshest feelings to you. No words can express my thanks. I wish this pretty letter can express a few of my heartfelt acknowledgments in the bottom of my heart. You have a sun like heart. Not only do you shine on the green gardens, but also the barren wasteland. Not only do you breed colorful flowers, but also slim grass, and towering trees. In my journey of life, you enrich my soul, enlighten my wisdom and light my lamp of hope. I will be grateful to you forever. Limitless deep love is what I have for you, I wish you happy with respect. Perhaps I am capricious, naughty, and make you worry about me. Perhaps I am tenacious, unsensible, and make you angry. However, in fact, I respect you. You are the greatest man in my heart. I guarantee that I will be more obedient tomorrow than today.

In our brilliant rays of wisdom, there is still the flame you ignited in those years. Without your generous attributions, how can I harvest? Thank you! I am sleeping; it is you who breeds me into a towering tree. I am a fire; it is you who ignited me. I am an instrument; it is you who play the strings of my heart. I will remember you forever. You make my discouraged and exhausted soul renew new courage. You give me the brightest and most precious jewels of self-confidence. Then I grew and feel more comfortable with myself. Flowers understand most the selflessness of spring rains. The moon understands most the generosity of the sun. I understand the deepest love from you, kindness is love. Though we are far apart, your image remains lofty in my heart like the sun, shining on me, giving me strength, though I have been away so long, I miss you.

Every note is glimmering your love. Every rhythm is full of your deep feelings. Because of you, my music of youth is so pure and fresh. You encourage children to seek knowledge with your talent and motivation. You turn your love into sunshine to brighten the soul of children. With love, you create a warm friendly atmosphere. The sunshine, the sound of the song and cheerful laughter are everywhere and every moment. Cherished in my heart are your urgings like the spring breeze, the drizzling rain, you bring me into a colorful world, a limitless world. It is you that open the window for our souls. It is you who make us see the broad world, celestial body beyond the Galaxy, tomorrow and future, yesterday and all things millions of billions years ago. When we fly, embracing the sky with forceful position and ardent hands, we will embrace you.

Long ago, in ancient California, there lived a very clever man named William Wirt Winchester, son of Oliver Fisher Winchester, Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut and famous manufacturer of the Winchester repeating rifle, had a most ambitious project, the Winchester mansion. Here, before the city of San Jose was even established, William Wirt Winchester moved to California began to have an architect build him a palace that would have outdone anything in the United States, at the time. The overall appearance was enchanting, indeed, as every castle should be. It was to have colonnades and cupolas, high enough for the king to see his warships riding at the San Francisco Bay, from the Winchester seven story Cathedral, lined on each side with noblemen’s houses. William planned a magnificent mansion that even had running water in the bathrooms. He was very proud of his skill.

William built a huge labyrinth, which had many false turns and dead-ends that no one who entered it could ever find a way out.  The mansion had a Gothic appearance by romantic additions of curious windows, corbels, and crenellations. When the labyrinth was finished, the angry Minotaur was sealed inside it. When the Minotaur was hungry, his roar shook the palace causing the 1906 earthquake, which was a magnitude 8.3 on the Richter scale. It was an extravagant maze of Victorian craftsmanship—marvelous, baffling, beautiful, and eccentric, to say the least. There was a switch back staircase, which has seven flight of stairs with 44 steps, rising only nine feet, miles of twisting hallways with secrete passage ways in the walls, supposedly it was to confuse the ghost or the Minotaur that might be following him. It is estimated that 500 to 600 rooms were built.

There are stairs that lead to the ceiling, doors that go nowhere and that open onto walls, and chimneys that stop just short of the roof. There are 47 fireplaces built of rosewood, cherry, mahogany, Italian marble, oak, teak, and pipestone; all hand carved and no two alike; 10,000 windows, 2 grand ball rooms, and the main staircase has 13 steps. There are different heating systems and three elevators, one hydraulic and two electric. Some of the 13 bathrooms lacked privacy, they have clear glass doors! One rambling room has 4 fireplaces, and hot air registers. A second story door opens into the great outdoors and a 20 foot step. A linen closet has the area of a 3 room apartment; a nearby cupboard is less than one inch deep. There is a skylight places in the middle of a room, in the floor! Another floor is apparently a series of trap doors. Exterior faucets project unexpectedly from under second story windows.

There is a door only 4 feet tall, the next gives clearance for an 8 foot giant. Many stairway turn posts are upside down. Entire walls are built entirely of half inch, half round strips. Everywhere prevails that strange deference to the number 13; 13 stair steps, 13 hangers in a closet, 13 wall panels, 13 lights in the chandeliers, 13 windows to a room, an Italian porcelain sink that has 13 drain holes. There is also a 7—11 staircase built in the shape of a letter “Y”, enabling servants to quickly get to three different levels of the house. There is a blue séance room and a set of $30,000.00 solid golf dinner service. Talk begat rumor and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose behind the six—foot hedge of Llanda Villa, the rumors grew to establish legend. Some started to say that the Winchester mansion was a rendezvous for legions of ghosts, with special attention accorded those created by a Winchester rifle slug.

At night, passers—by heard ghostly music wafting from the dark mansion, and a pack of ferocious hellhounds and a staff of armed bodyguards surrounded the mansion. William was satisfied. William wanted to leave the mansion after it was completed. He told his father Oliver Winchester that he wanted to leave the mansion. “Great King, with your permission, I shall take my leave. My work is done, and I wish to return to Athens with my son,” said William Winchester. “You will do no such thing. You know the secret of the labyrinth. How do I know you will not tell somebody how to find the way through the twisting passageways?”

“I pledge to you that I will do no such thing!” protested William. However, King Oliver Winchester had William Winchester and his son seized, they were locked in a tall tower, at the very edge of the palace grounds. They were kept under close guard in the tower. “Father, are we going to be locked in this tower forever?” Asked William’s son, Randolph. “I am a great inventor, Randolph,” replied William. “This is a difficult problem, but I shall think of a solution. However, while Sarah Winchester (William’s wife), was pregnant with her daughter Anne, lightning struck the tower, and it burned to the ground, killing William and his son.

Shortly after Sarah gave birth, her daughter Anne died also. Sarah Kept building on the mansion, until her death 5 September 1922, the mansion was incomplete, though it had been underconstruction for 38 years. Today, it is open to visitors. However, they are told to keep close to the tour guides so they do not get lost. Some of the mansion was split up and turned into houses for masons, there used to be 160 acres of land, but only 4 remain, and the mansion is now 160 rooms, and the seven story tower was dismantled.

 

We have endured a major attack, over a three-week period, been under extreme stress and have not back down, we stand fourth with perseverance and pride. Everyone fancies the laws which fill his pockets to be God’s laws. Little spirits will always accommodate themselves to the subject they would work upon: will fawn upon a sturdy-tempered person: will insult the meek. Many accept the but half-worthy for fear a still worse should offer. We might dispense with the sweet in the coffee, could we escape from the bitter of life. We cannot all be sound: we have got to be the way we are made. All are not born to buffet with adversity. However, one who can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatest adversity. Men love not the remembrance of their crime; firm friendships can be never founded on the basis of guilt; hence the wicked have no sympathy for each other in the hour of adversity. Abused and prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our greatest adversity. People in difficulty and distress, or in any manner at odds with the World, can endure a vast amount of harsh treatment, and perhaps be the stronger for it; whereas, they give way at once before the simplest expression of what they perceive to be genuine sympathy.

 Therefore, I will teach them—this time I will teach them. My power and might. Then they will know that my name is the LORD Randolph. Never was a nature more perfectly fortunate. It was not a restless, apprehensive, ambitious spirit, running a race with the tyranny of fate, but a temper so unsuspicious as to put Adversity off its guard, dodging and evading her with the easy, natural motion of wind-shifted flower. He knows himself, and that is in him, who knows adversity. The likelihood of great calamities occurring seldom obtrudes upon the minds of the ignorant men; for the things which wise people know, anticipate, and guard against, the ignorant can only become acquainted with by meeting them face to face. And even when experiences has taught them, the lesson only serves for that day. Oh LORD, my strength and my fortress, my refuse in the tie of distress, to you the nations will come from the ends of the Earth and say, our Father possessed nothing, but false gods, worthless idols that did them no good. Do men make their own gods? Yes, but they are not gods! Cursed in the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strengths and whose heart turns away from the LORD. 

He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parches places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. However, blessed is the people who trust in the Lord. Even the children remember their alters. My mountain in the land and your wealth and all your treasures I will give away as plunder, together with your high places, because of sin throughout your country. Through your own fault you will lose the inheritance I gave you. I will enslave you to enemies in a land you do not know, for you have kindled my anger, and it will burn forever. However, blessed is the people who trust in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not feat when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought, and never fails to bear fruit. I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve. Like a partridge that hatches eggs it did not lay, is the man who gains riches by unjust means. 

They said, “Come, let’s make plans against Randolph; for the teaching of the law by the priest will not be lost, nor will counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophets. Some come, let’s attack him with our tongues and pay no attention to anything he says.” Listen to me O Lord; hear what my accusers are saying! Should good be repaid with evil? Yet they have dug a pit for me. Remember that I stood before you and spoke in their behalf to turn your wrath away from the. So give their children over to famine; hand them over to the power of the sword. Let their wives be make childless and widows; let their men be put to death, their young men slain by the sword in battle. Let a cry be heard from their houses when you suddenly bring invaders against them, for they have dug a pit to capture me and have hidden snares for my feet. However, you know, O LORD, all their plots to kill me. DO not forgive their crimes or blot out their sins from your sight. Let them be overthrown before you; deal with them in the time of your anger. In April of your age, you should be like April. In youth, as at the opera, everything seems possible. Youth!

 There is absolutely nothing in the World, but youth! The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming. Aggressors lay themselves open to severe reprisals. From rough outside, serene and gentle influences often proceed. What is the use of living cheap when you have got no money? You might as well live dear. Peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats. While the grass grows, the steed starves. There are really no miseries except natural miseries; conventional misfortunes are mere illusions. Tomorrow, 21 December 2014, at 15.03 is Winter Solstices, which is the longest night of the year, and the shortest day. A long, deep sob of that mysterious, wondrous happiness that is one with pain. The impetuosity of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and anathematizes–there is a triumph in the humiliation, and a tenderness in the strife.