8月07日英语故事：The Touchstone 英语, Touchstone, The, 故事

星期一

read the story carefully and then translate the phrases which are marked in red or write down what you get from the story to gain the score. 试着翻译红色的部分或者发表自己的看法.



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

The book wasn’t very interesing, 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 lookd 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 pebles 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 the stones he examined was the Touchstone. Yet he went on and on this way. He picked up a pebble. It was cold, so he threw it into the sea.He picked up another. He threw 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 stil threw it away.

So it is with opportunity. Unless we are careful, 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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