The Touchstone 试金石（在线收听）

[00:04.63]The Touchstone 试金石

[00:06.87]When the great library of Alexandria burned,

[00:10.58]the story goes, one book was saved.

[00:13.76] But it was not a valuable book;

[00:16.16]and so a poor man, who could read a little, bought it for a few coppers.

[00:21.08]The book wasn’t very interesting,

[00:23.71]but between its pages there was something very interesting indeed.

[00:27.76]It was a thin strip of vellum on which was written the secret of the "Touchstone"!

[00:33.34]The touchstone was a small pebble that could turn any common metal into pure gold.

[00:39.25] The writing explained that it was lying among

[00:42.53]thousands and thousands of other pebbles that looked exactly like it.

[00:46.47] But the secret was this:

[00:48.76]The real stone would feel warm,

[00:51.17]while ordinary pebbles are cold.

[00:53.47]So the man sold his few belongings,

[00:56.42]bought some simple supplies,

[00:58.61] camped on the seashore,

[01:00.25]and began testing pebbles.

[01:02.11]He knew that if he picked up ordinary pebbles

[01:05.28] and threw them down again because they were cold,

[01:08.35] he might pick up the same pebble hundreds of times.

[01:11.51]So, when he felt one that was cold,

[01:14.57] he threw it into the sea.

[01:16.44]He spent a whole day doing this but none of them was the touchstone.

[01:21.26]Yet he went on and on this way.

[01:23.88] Pick up a pebble.

[01:25.30] Cold—throw it into the sea.

[01:27.49] Pick up another. Throw it into the sea.

[01:30.55]The days stretched into weeks and the weeks into months.

[01:34.72] One day, however, about midafternoon,

[01:37.88] he picked up a pebble and it was warm.

[01:40.62] He threw it into the sea before he realized what he had done.

[01:44.34] He had formed such a strong habit of throwing each pebble into the sea

[01:49.04]that when the one he wanted came along,

[01:51.78] he still threw it away.

[01:53.74]So it is with opportunity.

[01:56.26]Unless we are vigilant,

[01:58.12]it’s easy to fail to recognize an opportunity

[02:01.51]when it is in hand

[02:03.26]and it’s just as easy to throw it away.