"ACRES OF DIAMONDS" By RUSSELL H. CONWELL.

ACRES OF DIAMONDS

_Friends_.--This lecture has been delivered under these circumstances:

I visit a town or city, and try to arrive there early enough to see the

postmaster, the barber, the keeper of the hotel, the principal of the

schools, and the ministers of some of the churches, and then go into

some of the factories and stores, and talk with the people, and get into

sympathy with the local conditions of that town or city and see what

has been their history, what opportunities they had, and what they had

failed to do--and every town fails to do something--and then go to the

lecture and talk to those people about the subjects which applied to

their locality. "Acres of Diamonds"--the idea--has continuously been

precisely the same. The idea is that in this country of ours every man

has the opportunity to make more of himself than he does in his own

environment, with his own skill, with his own energy, and with his own

friends. RUSSELL H. CONWELL.

ACRES OF DIAMONDS

[1]

WHEN going down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers many years ago with a

party of English travelers I found myself under the direction of an old

Arab guide whom we hired up at Bagdad, and I have often thought how

that guide resembled our barbers in certain mental characteristics. He

thought that it was not only his duty to guide us down those rivers,

and do what he was paid for doing, but also to entertain us with stories

curious and weird, ancient and modern, strange and familiar. Many of

them I have forgotten, and I am glad I have, but there is one I shall

never forget.

The old guide was leading my camel by its halter along the banks of

those ancient rivers, and he told me story after story until I grew

weary of his story-telling and ceased to listen. I have never been

irritated with that guide when he lost his temper as I ceased listening.

But I remember that he took off his Turkish cap and swung it in a circle

to get my attention. I could see it through the corner of my eye, but

I determined not to look straight at him for fear he would tell another

story. But although I am not a woman, I did finally look, and as soon as

I did he went right into another story.

Said he, "I will tell you a story now which I reserve for my particular

friends." When he emphasized the words "particular friends," I listened,

and I have ever been glad I did. I really feel devoutly thankful, that

there are 1,674 young men who have been carried through college by this

lecture who are also glad that I did listen. The old guide told me that

there once lived not far from the River Indus an ancient Persian by the

name of Ali Hafed. He said that Ali Hafed owned a very large farm,

that he had orchards, grain-fields, and gardens; that he had money at

interest, and was a wealthy and contented man. He was contented because

he was wealthy, and wealthy because he was contented. One day there

visited that old Persian farmer one of these ancient Buddhist priests,

one of the wise men of the East. He sat down by the fire and told the

old farmer how this world of ours was made. He said that this world was

once a mere bank of fog, and that the Almighty thrust His finger into

this bank of fog, and began slowly to move His finger around, increasing

the speed until at last He whirled this bank of fog into a solid ball of

fire. Then it went rolling through the universe, burning its way through

other banks of fog, and condensed the moisture without, until it fell in

floods of rain upon its hot surface, and cooled the outward crust.

Then the internal fires bursting outward through the crust threw up

the mountains and hills, the valleys, the plains and prairies of this

wonderful world of ours. If this internal molten mass came bursting out

and cooled very quickly it became granite; less quickly copper, less

quickly silver, less quickly gold, and, after gold, diamonds were made.

Said the old priest, "A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight." Now

that is literally scientifically true, that a diamond is an actual

deposit of carbon from the sun. The old priest told Ali Hafed that if he

had one diamond the size of his thumb he could purchase the county, and

if he had a mine of diamonds he could place his children upon thrones

through the influence of their great wealth.

Ali Hafed heard all about diamonds, how much they were worth, and went

to his bed that night a poor man. He had not lost anything, but he was

poor because he was discontented, and discontented because he feared

he was poor. He said, "I want a mine of diamonds," and he lay awake all

night.

Early in the morning he sought out the priest. I know by experience that

a priest is very cross when awakened early in the morning, and when he

shook that old priest out of his dreams, Ali Hafed said to him:

"Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?"

"Diamonds! What do you want with diamonds?" "Why, I wish to be immensely

rich." "Well, then, go along and find them. That is all you have to do;

go and find them, and then you have them." "But I don't know where to

go." "Well, if you will find a river that runs through white sands,

between high mountains, in those white sands you will always find

diamonds." "I don't believe there is any such river." "Oh yes, there are

plenty of them. All you have to do is to go and find them, and then you

have them." Said Ali Hafed, "I will go."

So he sold his farm, collected his money, left his family in charge of

a neighbor, and away he went in search of diamonds. He began his search,

very properly to my mind, at the Mountains of the Moon. Afterward he

came around into Palestine, then wandered on into Europe, and at last

when his money was all spent and he was in rags, wretchedness, and

poverty, he stood on the shore of that bay at Barcelona, in Spain, when

a great tidal wave came rolling in between the pillars of Hercules, and

the poor, afflicted, suffering, dying man could not resist the awful

temptation to cast himself into that incoming tide, and he sank beneath

its foaming crest, never to rise in this life again.

When that old guide had told me that awfully sad story he stopped the

camel I was riding on and went back to fix the baggage that was coming

off another camel, and I had an opportunity to muse over his story while

he was gone. I remember saying to myself, "Why did he reserve that

story for his 'particular friends'?" There seemed to be no beginning, no

middle, no end, nothing to it. That was the first story I had ever heard

told in my life, and would be the first one I ever read, in which the

hero was killed in the first chapter. I had but one chapter of that

story, and the hero was dead.

When the guide came back and took up the halter of my camel, he went

right ahead with the story, into the second chapter, just as though

there had been no break. The man who purchased Ali Hafed's farm one day

led his camel into the garden to drink, and as that camel put its nose

into the shallow water of that garden brook, Ali Hafed's successor

noticed a curious flash of light from the white sands of the stream. He

pulled out a black stone having an eye of light reflecting all the hues

of the rainbow. He took the pebble into the house and put it on the

mantel which covers the central fires, and forgot all about it.

A few days later this same old priest came in to visit Ali Hafed's

successor, and the moment he opened that drawing-room door he saw that

flash of light on the mantel, and he rushed up to it, and shouted:

"Here is a diamond! Has Ali Hafed returned?" "Oh no, Ali Hafed has not

returned, and that is not a diamond. That is nothing but a stone we

found right out here in our own garden." "But," said the priest, "I

tell you I know a diamond when I see it. I know positively that is a

diamond."

Then together they rushed out into that old garden and stirred up

the white sands with their fingers, and lo! there came up other more

beautiful and valuable gems than the first. "Thus," said the guide

to me, and, friends, it is historically true, "was discovered the

diamond-mine of Golconda, the most magnificent diamond-mine in all the

history of mankind, excelling the Kimberly itself. The Kohinoor, and the

Orloff of the crown jewels of England and Russia, the largest on earth,

came from that mine."

When that old Arab guide told me the second chapter of his story, he

then took off his Turkish cap and swung it around in the air again to

get my attention to the moral. Those Arab guides have morals to their

stories, although they are not always moral. As he swung his hat, he

said to me, "Had Ali Hafed remained at home and dug in his own cellar,

or underneath his own wheat-fields, or in his own garden, instead of

wretchedness, starvation, and death by suicide in a strange land, he

would have had 'acres of diamonds.' For every acre of that old farm,

yes, every shovelful, afterward revealed gems which since have decorated

the crowns of monarchs."

When he had added the moral to his story I saw why he reserved it for

"his particular friends." But I did not tell him I could see it. It was

that mean old Arab's way of going around a thing like a lawyer, to

say indirectly what he did not dare say directly, that "in his private

opinion there was a certain young man then traveling down the Tigris

River that might better be at home in America." I did not tell him I

could see that, but I told him his story reminded me of one, and I told

it to him quick, and I think I will tell it to you.

I told him of a man out in California in 1847 who owned a ranch. He

heard they had discovered gold in southern California, and so with a

passion for gold he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter, and away he went,

never to come back. Colonel Sutter put a mill upon a stream that ran

through that ranch, and one day his little girl brought some wet sand

from the raceway into their home and sifted it through her fingers

before the fire, and in that falling sand a visitor saw the first

shining scales of real gold that were ever discovered in California. The

man who had owned that ranch wanted gold, and he could have secured it

for the mere taking. Indeed, thirty-eight millions of dollars has

been taken out of a very few acres since then. About eight years ago I

delivered this lecture in a city that stands on that farm, and they

told me that a one-third owner for years and years had been getting one

hundred and twenty dollars in gold every fifteen minutes, sleeping or

waking, without taxation. You and I would enjoy an income like that--if

we didn't have to pay an income tax.

But a better illustration really than that occurred here in our

own Pennsylvania. If there is anything I enjoy above another on the

platform, it is to get one of these German audiences in Pennsylvania

before me, and fire that at them, and I enjoy it to-night. There was

a man living in Pennsylvania, not unlike some Pennsylvanians you have

seen, who owned a farm, and he did with that farm just what I should do

with a farm if I owned one in Pennsylvania--he sold it. But before he

sold it he decided to secure employment collecting coal-oil for his

cousin, who was in the business in Canada, where they first discovered

oil on this continent. They dipped it from the running streams at that

early time. So this Pennsylvania farmer wrote to his cousin asking for

employment. You see, friends, this farmer was not altogether a foolish

man. No, he was not. He did not leave his farm until he had something

else to do. _*Of all the simpletons the stars shine on I don't know of a

worse one than the man who leaves one job before he has gotten another_.

That has especial reference to my profession, and has no reference

whatever to a man seeking a divorce. When he wrote to his cousin for

employment, his cousin replied, "I cannot engage you because you know

nothing about the oil business."

Well, then the old farmer said, "I will know," and with most commendable

zeal (characteristic of the students of Temple University) he set

himself at the study of the whole subject. He began away back at the

second day of God's creation when this world was covered thick and deep

with that rich vegetation which since has turned to the primitive beds

of coal. He studied the subject until he found that the drainings

really of those rich beds of coal furnished the coal-oil that was worth

pumping, and then he found how it came up with the living springs. He

studied until he knew what it looked like, smelled like, tasted like,

and how to refine it. Now said he in his letter to his cousin, "I

understand the oil business." His cousin answered, "All right, come on."

So he sold his farm, according to the county record, for $833 (even

money, "no cents"). He had scarcely gone from that place before the

man who purchased the spot went out to arrange for the watering of the

cattle. He found the previous owner had gone out years before and put

a plank across the brook back of the barn, edgewise into the surface

of the water just a few inches. The purpose of that plank at that

sharp angle across the brook was to throw over to the other bank a

dreadful-looking scum through which the cattle would not put their

noses. But with that plank there to throw it all over to one side, the

cattle would drink below, and thus that man who had gone to Canada had

been himself damming back for twenty-three years a flood of coal-oil

which the state geologists of Pennsylvania declared to us ten years

later was even then worth a hundred millions of dollars to our state,

and four years ago our geologist declared the discovery to be worth

to our state a thousand millions of dollars. The man who owned that

territory on which the city of Titusville now stands, and those

Pleasantville valleys, had studied the subject from the second day of

God's creation clear down to the present time. He studied it until he

knew all about it, and yet he is said to have sold the whole of it for

$833, and again I say, "no sense."

But I need another illustration. I found it in Massachusetts, and I am

sorry I did because that is the state I came from. This young man in

Massachusetts furnishes just another phase of my thought. He went to

Yale College and studied mines and mining, and became such an adept as

a mining engineer that he was employed by the authorities of the

university to train students who were behind their classes. During his

senior year he earned $15 a week for doing that work. When he

graduated they raised his pay from $15 to $45 a week, and offered him a

professorship, and as soon as they did he went right home to his mother.

_*If they had raised that boy's pay from $15 to $15.60 he would have

stayed and been proud of the place, but when they put it up to $45 at

one leap, he said, "Mother, I won't work for $45 a week. The idea of

a man with a brain like mine working for $45 a week!_ Let's go out in

California and stake out gold-mines and silver-mines, and be immensely

rich."

Said his mother, "Now, Charlie, it is just as well to be happy as it is

to be rich."

"Yes," said Charlie, "but it is just as well to be rich and happy,

too." And they were both right about it. As he was an only son and she a

widow, of course he had his way. They always do.

They sold out in Massachusetts, and instead of going to California they

went to Wisconsin, where he went into the employ of the Superior Copper

Mining Company at $15 a week again, but with the proviso in his contract

that he should have an interest in any mines he should discover for the

company. I don't believe he ever discovered a mine, and if I am looking

in the face of any stockholder of that copper company you wish he had

discovered something or other. I have friends who are not here because

they could not afford a ticket, who did have stock in that company at

the time this young man was employed there. This young man went out

there, and I have not heard a word from him. I don't know what became

of him, and I don't know whether he found any mines or not, but I don't

believe he ever did.

But I do know the other end of the line. He had scarcely gotten out of

the old homestead before the succeeding owner went out to dig potatoes.

The potatoes were already growing in the ground when he bought the farm,

and as the old farmer was bringing in a basket of potatoes it

hugged very tight between the ends of the stone fence. You know in

Massachusetts our farms are nearly all stone wall. There you are obliged

to be very economical of front gateways in order to have some place to

put the stone. When that basket hugged so tight he set it down on the

ground, and then dragged on one side, and pulled on the other side, and

as he was dragging that basket through this farmer noticed in the upper

and outer corner of that stone wall, right next the gate, a block of

native silver eight inches square. That professor of mines, mining, and

mineralogy who knew so much about the subject that he would not work for

$45 a week, when he sold that homestead in Massachusetts sat right on

that silver to make the bargain. He was born on that homestead, was

brought up there, and had gone back and forth rubbing the stone with his

sleeve until it reflected his countenance, and seemed to say, "Here is

a hundred thousand dollars right down here just for the taking." But he

would not take it. It was in a home in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and

there was no silver there, all away off--well, I don't know where, and

he did not, but somewhere else, and he was a professor of mineralogy.

My friends, that mistake is very universally made, and why should we

even smile at him. I often wonder what has become of him. I do not know

at all, but I will tell you what I "guess" as a Yankee. I guess that he

sits out there by his fireside to-night with his friends gathered around

him, and he is saying to them something like this: "Do you know that man

Conwell who lives in Philadelphia?" "Oh yes, I have heard of him." "Do

you know that man Jones that lives in Philadelphia?" "Yes, I have heard

of him, too."

Then he begins to laugh, and shakes his sides and says to his friends,

"Well, they have done just the same thing I did, precisely"--and that

spoils the whole joke, for you and I have done the same thing he did,

and while we sit here and laugh at him he has a better right to sit out

there and laugh at us. I know I have made the same mistakes, but, of

course, that does not make any difference, because we don't expect the

same man to preach and practise, too.