WORTH READING 25 April 2006

The Touchstone

When the great library of Alexandria burned, the story goes, one book
was
saved. But it was not a valuable book; and so a poor man, who could read
a
little, bought it for a few coppers.

The book wasn't very interesting, but between its pages there was
something
very interesting indeed. It was a thin strip of vellum on which was
written
the secret of the "Touchstone"!

The touchstone was a small pebble that could turn any common metal into
pure
gold. The writing explained that it was lying among thousands and
thousands
of other pebbles that looked exactly like it. But the secret was this:
The
real stone would feel warm, while ordinary pebbles are cold.

So the man sold his few belongings, bought some simple supplies, camped
on
the seashore, and began testing pebbles.

He knew that if he picked up ordinary pebbles and threw them down again
because they were cold, he might pick up the same pebble hundreds of
times.
So, when he felt one that was cold, he threw it into the sea. He spent a
whole day doing this but none of them was the touchstone. Yet he went on
and
on this way. Pick up a pebble. Cold - throw it into the sea. Pick up
another. Throw it into the sea.

The days stretched into weeks and the weeks into months. One day,
however,
about midafternoon, he picked up a pebble and it was warm. He threw it
into
the sea before he realized what he had done. He had formed such a strong
habit of throwing each pebble into the sea that when the one he wanted
came
along, he still threw it away.

So it is with opportunity. Unless we are vigilant, it's easy to fail to
recognize an opportunity when it is in hand and it's just as easy to
throw
it away.

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