If I Rest, I RustThe significant inscription found on an old k
ey---"If I rest, I rust"---would be an excellent motto for those who are afflicted with th
e slightest bit of idleness. Even the most industrious person might adopt it with advantag
e to serve as a reminder that, if one allows his faculties to rest, like the iron in the u
nused key, they will soon show signs of rust and, ultimately, cannot do the work required
of them.Those who would attain the heights reached and kept by great men must keep their f
aculties polished by constant use, so that they may unlock the doors of knowledge, the gat
e 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 treasury o
f achievement. If Hugh Miller, after toiling all day in a quarry, had devoted his evenings
to rest and recreation, he would never have become a famous geologist. The celebrated mat
hematician, 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, h
ad the little Scotch 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 bead
s, he would never have become a famous astronomer.Labor vanquishes all---not inconstant, s
pasmodic, or ill-directed labor; but faithful, unremitting, daily effort toward a well-dir
ected purpose. Just as truly as eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, so is eternal i
ndustry the price of noble and enduring success.