The significant inscription1（题词，铭文） found on an old key --If I rest, I rust2-- would be an excellent motto for those who are afflicted3 with the slightest bit of idleness. Even the most industrious4（勤勉的） person might adopt it with advantage to serve as a reminder5 that, if one allows his faculties6 to rest, like the iron in the unused key, they will soon show signs of rust and, ultimately, cannot do the work required of them.
Those who would attain7 the heights reached and kept by great men must keep their faculties polished by constant use, so that they may unlock the doors of knowledge, the gate that guard the entrances to the professions, to science, art, literature, agriculture---every department of human endeavor.
Industry keeps bright the key that opens the treasury8 of achievement. If Hugh Miller9, after toiling10 all day in a quarry11, had devoted12 his evenings to rest and recreation, he would never have become a famous geologist13. The celebrated14 mathematician15, Edmund Stone, would never have published a mathematical dictionary, never have found the key to science of mathematics, if he had given his spare moments to idleness, had the little Scotch16 lad, Ferguson, allowed the busy brain to go to sleep while he tended sheep on the hillside instead of calculating the position of the stars by a string of beads17, he would never have become a famous astronomer18.
Labor19 vanquishes20 all---not inconstant, spasmodic（痉挛的）, or ill-directed labor; but faithful, unremitting, daily effort toward a well-directed purpose. Just as truly as eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, so is eternal industry the price of noble and enduring success.
