The famous Italian singer Enrico Caruso sang in many countries of Europe. He visited Russia, France, Germany, Spain and many other countries. Everywhere he was a great success and his name was well-known all over the world. Caruso knew that he was famous, but he liked to repeat the sentence:” No man is so well known as he thinks he is”. Once he was invited to the USA to give some concerts. When he was driving to New York, his car broke and he had to stay at a farmhim. The farmer agreed to do it. While the farmer was repairing the car, Caruso was invited into the house to have a rest.

George had stolen some money, but the police had caught him and he had been put into prison. Now his trial was about to begin, and he felt sure that he would be found guilty and sent to prison for a long time. Then he discovered that an old friend of his was one of the members of the jury at his trial. Of course, he did not tell anybody, but he managed to see his friend secretly one day. He said to him,” Jim, I know that the jury will find me guilty of having stolen the money. I cannot hope to be found not guilty of taking it – that would be too much to expect. But I should be grateful to you for the rest of my life if you could persuade the other members of the jury to add a strong recommendation for mercy to their statement that they consider me guilty.”

One evening at dinner the conversation by chance drifted to the subject of pearls. There had been in the papers a good deal of talk about the culture pearls which the cunning Japanese were making, and the doctor remarked that they must inevitably diminish the value of real ones. Mr. Kelada, as was in his habit, rushed the new topic. He told us all that was to be known about pearls.

Mrs. Jones was over eighty, but she still drove her old car like a woman half her age. She loved driving very fast, and boasted of the fact that she had never, in her thirty-five years of driving, been punished for a driving offence. Then one day she nearly lost her record. A police car followed her, and the policemen in it saw her pass a red light without stopping.

Oedipus was born to Queen Jocasta and King Laius in the city of Thebes. When Oedipus was born, the gods told Laius he would be killed by his own son. The son would then marry his own mother. Laius felt he had to get rid of the boy. So he sent the baby Oedipus up to a mountain. There he was left to die. But Oedipus did not die. He grew to be a man. He lived his life alone and sad.

Daedalus was a brighfman. He was full of ideas on how to build and make new things. His king asked him to build a life-sized maze. The king put people inside the maze, hoping they would never find their way out. But some people did find their way out of maze. The king believed that Daedalus had told them how. So he put Daedalus and his sun Icarus into the maze to see if they could find their way out.

There was a time when the people of Greece were not united but instead there were several states each of which had its own ruler. Some of the people in the southern part of the country were called Spartans and they were famous for their simple habits and their bravery. The name of their land was Laconia, so they were sometimes called Lacons. One of the strange rules, which the Spartans had, was that they should speak briefly and never use more words than were needed. A short answer is often called laconic that is such an answer, as a Lacon would give.