There was a businessman who was deep in debt (债务) and could see no way out. He sat on a park bench, head in his hands.

Suddenly, an old man stood before him. "I can see that something is 1 you," he said. After listening to the businessman's story, the old man wrote out a 2 , and put it in his hand, saying, "Take it and pay me back here exactly one year from today." Then he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come.

The businessman saw in his hand a check for $500, 000, signed by John D. Rockefeller, one of the richest men in the world!

"I can 3 my debts in a second!" he realized. But 4 , the businessman decided to put the check in his safe. Just knowing it was there might give him the 5 to save his business, he thought.

He went back and worked hard to make his business 6 . Within several months, he was out of debt and making money once again. 

Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the check. At the agreed-upon time, he saw the old man come with a nurse. The nurse spoke to the businessman and said that the old man was 7  ill and was always telling people that he was John D. Rockefeller. 

The businessman was 8  to hear this. All year long he'd been buying and selling, believing that he had half a million dollars behind him. Suddenly, he 9  that it wasn't the money, real or imagined, that had turned his life around. It was his newfound self-confidence that had helped him 10  anything he went after.