"a little velvet to see you through"

Dont understand this sentence .

it's a sentence I saw from a movie , 

a used to be famous novelist are in dire needs of help because he has spent all of his money saved up for his entire life and become a poor guy that nobody wants to talk about. In this very moment, his old friend as the novelist's former publisher comes to him and lends him a helping hand, gives him a small check and says the sentence " a little velvet to see you through" , I couldn't find out what the word "velvet" means ? as far as I know about this word is a slick cloth, but what his friend lends to him is a check.. 

All you can eat I had an appointment today with my friend to eat out at Japanese restaurant because we both have been thinking of eating there for a while. we choose all you can eat and we had gorged within 30 minutes and then our stomach felt a little bit uncomfortable. It ended up with sitting there and just waiting so that we can consume all of the meal that we had ordered. Eating too much makes me feel like vomiting. It's better to eat moderately instead of overly.

Grammer Questions: "There is a terrorist headed for the States" "There is a terrorist headed for the States"-- from movie , Surviver. The main charactor who work for bureau tell this information to her coworker. I don't understand its grammer construction. Which options belowing are appropriate. 1.There is a terrorist who headed for the States. 2.There is a terrorist who heading for the States. 3.There is a terrorist heading for the States.

What are the differences between sympathy and empathy ? For example : 1. I had sympathey for homeless. 2. I had empathy for homeless. Are the meanings of them different ? Thanks for help !

What are the differences between tense and intense ? If I want to describle a situation is getting harder. Can I use these sentences . 1.The situation here is getting tense. 2.The situation here is getting intense. Thanks for help !

My today's diary. It's a sunny day today so I went to school in a good mood.At first class,we played a warm-up game, which is lead by one of our classmates ,Shin. The Game was pretty fun. The leader gave us 16 letters from A to Z randomly, and then we need to find some vocabularies within these 16 lettes, luckily, there is a teacher, her name is Julia, in our team, we seperated 2 teams from our classmates before we started the game, so we took our advantages of it and we won the game. Secondly, we played another game ,battleship, which seem very famous in Canada and everyone participated and enjoyed the game. Thirdly, we took a test, called Ipac, in the afternoon. The test is really special because we need to talk with a computer.There was a cartoon woman charecter on the screen and it ask some questions for examinees to know how fluent they are and how correct grammar they use. After that, we made 3 groups for presantations and the topic was about current events. Finally, before we got off the English class, teacher Julia introduced one of her best friend to our classroom, and I have to say that she is so tall, she has 191 centimeters!