 Part 1 of Acres of Diamonds. When going down the Tigris and Euphrates River many, many years ago, with my party of English travelers I found myself under the direction of an old Arab guide whom we hired up at Baghdad, 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 that 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 storytelling 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. 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 orchids, grainfields and gardens, that he had money of 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 those 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 the world was once a mere bank of fog, and that the Almighty thrust his finger into the 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 fogs and condensed the moisture without. Until it fell in fields 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 down 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 country, 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 everything, 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 want to be immensely rich. Well then go along and find them. That is all you have to do. Go and find them, and you will then have them. 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 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 promptly, to my mind, in the mountains of the moon. Afterwards he came around into Palestine, then wandered on into Europe, and at last when his money was all spent and he was in rags, of wickedness 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 the 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 the 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, and no end, nothing to it. That was the first story I had ever heard told in my life, and it would be the first one I ever read in which the hero was killed in the first chapter. I had but one chapter of the 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 Hafez'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 Hafez'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 of 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 Hafez'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 Hafez returned? Oh, no, Ali Hafez has not returned. And that is not a diamond. That is nothing but a stone we found right 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. Hafez said the guy to us, and friends, it is historically true, was discovered the diamond mine Galconia, the most magnificent diamond mine of all in the history of mankind, excelling the Kimberley itself, Kehnur and the Orloff of the crown jewels of England and Russia. The largest on earth came from that mine. When that old Arab guy told me the second chapter of the 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 Hafez remained at home, and dug in his own cellar, or underneath his own wheat fields, or in his own gardens, 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 this story, I saw why it was reserved 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 be better 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. 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, 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 million dollars has been taken out of that 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 thousand 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 tonight. 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 of 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 a special 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 in business because you know nothing about the oil business. Well then the farmer said, I will know, and with most considerable zeal characteristic of the students of Temple University. He sat himself at the study of the whole subject. He began a way back at the second day of God's creation, when the world was covered thick and deep with that rich vegetation which has since turned into primitive beds of coal. He studied the subject until he found that the draining's really of those rich beds of coal furnished the coal oil that was worth pumping. And then he found out how it came up with the living springs. He studied until he knew what it looked like, smelled like, tasted like, how to refine it. Now he said in his letter to this cousin, I understand the oil business. The cousin answered, all right, come on. So he sold his farm, according to the county record, for $833, even money no sense. He had scarcely gone from that place before the man who had 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 the 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 the man who had gone to Canada had himself been damning back for twenty-three years a flood of coal oil, which the state geologist of Pennsylvania declared to us ten years later was even then worth a hundred million dollars to our state. And four years ago our geologist declared the discovery to be worth to our state a thousand million 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 eight hundred and thirty-three dollars. Again 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 come from. This young man in Massachusetts furnished 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 in their classes. During his senior year he earned fifteen dollars a week for doing that work. When he graduated they raised his pay from fifteen to forty-five dollars 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 fifteen to fifteen-sixty he would have stayed and been proud of the place. But when they put it at forty-five dollars in one leap he said, Mother, I won't work for forty-five dollars a week. The idea of a man with a brain like mine working for forty-five dollars a week, let's go out to 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 both went right about it, as he was an only son and she was 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 fifteen dollars 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 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 do not 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. They are obliged to be very economical in front gateways in order to have some place to put that stone. When that basket hugged so tight he set it down on the ground and dragged on one side and pulled on the other. And as he was dragging the basket through this farmer noticed in the upper and outer corner of the stone wall right next to the gate a block of native silver eight inches square that professor of mines, mining, and mineralogy knew so much about the subject that he would not work for forty-five dollars 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 way off. Well, I don't know where, and he did not, but anywhere else. And he was a professor of mineralogy. My friends, that mistake is very universally made. And why should we even smile at them? I often wonder what has become of him. I do not know at all. But I will tell you that I guess, as a Yankee, that he sits out there by his fireside tonight with his friends gathered around him, and he is saying to them something like, Do you know that man Conwell, who lives in Philadelphia? Oh yes, I have heard of him. Do you know that man Jones, who lives in Philadelphia? Yes, I have heard of him, too. And 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 a 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 mistake, but of course, that does not make any difference, because we don't expect the same man to preach and practice, too. As I come here tonight, I look around this audience, and I am seeing again what, through these fifty years, I have continually seen men that are making precisely that same mistake. I often wish I could see the younger people, and that the Academy had been filled tonight with our high school scholars and our grammar school scholars, that I could have them to talk to, while I would have preferred such an audience as that, because they are the most susceptible. As they have not grown up into their prejudices as we have, they have not gotten into any custom that they cannot break. They have not met with any failures as we have. And while I could perhaps do such an audience as that more good than I can do grown-up people, yet I will do my best I can with the material I have. I say to you that you have acres of diamonds in Philadelphia, right where you now live. Oh, but you will say you cannot know much about our city if you think there are any acres of diamonds here. I was greatly interested in that account in the newspaper of a young man who found that diamond in North Carolina was one of the purest diamonds that has ever been discovered, and it has several predecessors near the same locality. I went to a distinguished professor in mineralogy and asked him where he thought those diamonds came from. The professor secured a map of the geologic formations of our continent and traced it. He said it either went through the underlying carboniferous strata adapted for such production westward through Ohio and the Mississippi, or in more probability came eastward through Virginia and up the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. It is a fact that diamonds were there, for they have been discovered and sold, and they were carried down there during the drift period from some northern locality. Now who can say but some person going down with his drill in Philadelphia will find some trace of a diamond mine yet down here. Oh, friends, you cannot say that you are not over one of the greatest diamond mines in the world, for such a diamond as that only comes from the most profitable mines that are found on Earth. End of Part 1 Part 2 of Acres of Diamonds This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Acres of Diamonds by Russell H. Conwell Part 2 But it serves simply to illustrate my thought, which I emphasize by saying, if you do not have the actual diamond mines literally, you have all that they would be good for you, because now that the Queen of England has given the greatest compliment ever to be conferred upon American women for her attire, because she did not appear with any jewels at all at the late reception. In England it is almost done away with the use of diamonds anyhow. All you would care for would be the few you would wear if you wish to be modest and the rest you would sell for money. Now then I say again that the opportunity to get rich, to attain into great wealth, is here in Philadelphia now, within the reach of almost every man and woman who hears me tonight. I mean just what I say. I have not come to this platform, even under these circumstances, to recite something to you. I have come to tell you what in God's sights I believe to be the truth, and if the years of life have been of any value to me in the attainment of common sense I know I am right that the men and women sitting here, who found it difficult perhaps to buy a ticket to this lecture or gathering to-night, have within reach acres of diamonds opportunities to get largely wealthy. There never was a place on earth more adapted than the city of Philadelphia to-day, and never in the history of the world did the poor man without capital have such an opportunity to get rich quickly and honestly as he has now in our city. I say this is the truth, and I want you to accept it as such, for if you think I have come to simply recite something, then I would better not be here. I have no time to waste with any such talk. But to say things I believe, and unless some of you get richer for what I am saying tonight, my time is wasted. I say to you, you ought to get rich. It is your duty to get rich. How many of my pious brethren say to me, do you, a Christian minister, spend your time going up and down the country advising young people to get rich to get money? Yes, of course I do, they say. Isn't that awful? Why don't you preach the gospel instead of preaching about man's making money? Because to make money honestly is to preach the gospel. That is the reason, and men who get rich may be the most honest men you will find in the community. Oh! But says some young man here tonight, I have been told all my life that if a person has money he is very dishonest and dishonorable and mean and contemptible. My friend, that is the reason why you have none. Because you have that idea that people, the foundation of your faith, is altogether false. Let me say here clearly, and let me say it briefly, no subject to discussion, which I have not time for here, ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men of America are honest. That is why they are rich. That is why they are trusted with money. That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them. It is because they are honest men. Says another young man, I hear sometimes of men that get millions of dollars dishonestly. Yes, of course you do, and so do I. But they are the rare thing, in fact, that the newspapers talk about them, all the time, as a matter of news, until you get the idea that all of the other rich men got rich dishonestly. My friend, you take and drive me if you furnish the auto out to the suburbs of Philadelphia and introduce me to the people who own their homes around this great city. These beautiful homes with gardens and flowers, these magnificent homes so lovely in their art, and I will introduce you to the very best people in character, as well as an enterprise in our city. And you know I will. A man is not really a true man until he owns his own home. And they that own their homes are made more honorable and honest and pure, and true and economical and careful by owning the home. For a man to have money, even in large sums, is an inconsistent thing. We preach against covetousness, and you know we do in the pulpit, and oftentimes preach against it so long, and we use the term about filthy lucre, so extremely that Christians get the idea that when we stand in the pulpit, we believe it is wicked for any man to have money, until the collection basket goes around, and then we almost swear at the people because they don't give more money, or the inconsistency of such doctrines as that. Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it. You ought because you can do more good with it than you can without it. Money printed your Bible, money builds your churches, money sends your missionaries, money pays your preachers, and you would not have them either if you did not pay them. I am always willing that a church should raise my salary because the church that pays the largest salary always raises it the easiest. You never know an exception to that in your life. The man who gets the largest salary can do the most good with the power that is furnished to him. Of course he can if his spirit is right to use it for what it is given to him. I say then, you ought to have money. If you can honestly attain your riches in Philadelphia, it is your Christian and godly duty to do so. It is an awful mistake of those pious people who think you must be awfully poor in order to be pious. Some men say, don't you sympathize with the poor people? Of course I do, or else I would not have been lecturing these years. I won't give in, but what I sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor who are to be sympathized with are very small. To sympathize with a man who God has punished for his sins, thus to help him, when God would still continue a just punishment is to do wrong. No doubt about it. And we do more than we help those who are deserving. While we should sympathize with God's poor, that is, those who cannot help themselves, let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings, or the shortcomings of someone else. It is all wrong to be poor. Let us give in to the argument and pass that to one side. A gentleman gets up back here and says, don't you think there are some things in this world that are better than money? Of course I do, but I am talking about money now. Of course there are some things higher than money. Oh yes, I know, by the grave that has left me standing above, that there are some things in this world that are higher and sweeter and purer than money. Well I do know there are some things higher and grander than gold. Love is the grandest thing on God's earth. But fortunate the lover who has plenty of money. Money is power, money is force. Money will do good as well as harm in the hands of good men and women it could accomplish, and it has accomplished good. I hate to leave that behind me. I heard a man get up, in a prayer meeting in our city, and thank the Lord for he was one of God's poor. Well I wonder what his wife thinks about that. He earns all the money that comes into this house, and he smokes a part of it on the veranda. I don't want to say any more of the Lord's poor of that kind, and I don't believe the Lord does, and yet there is some people who think in order to be pious you must be awfully poor and awfully dirty. That does not follow at all. While we sympathize with the poor, let us not teach a doctrine like that. Yet the age is prejudice against advising a Christian man, or as a Jew would say, a godly man, from attaining unto wealth. The prejudice is so universal, and the years are far enough back, I think, for me to safely mention, that years ago, at Temple University, there was a young man in our theological school who thought he was the only pious student in that department. He came into my office one evening and sat down by my desk and told me, Mr. President, I think it is my duty, sir, to come in and labor with you. What has happened now, said he. I heard you say at the academy that the peer school commencement, that you thought it was an honorable ambition for a young man to desire to have wealth, and that you thought it made him temperate, made him anxious, to have a good name, and made him industrious. You spoke about man's ambition to have money helping to make him a good man. Sir, I have come to you to tell you the Holy Bible says that money is the root of all evil. I told him I had never seen it in the Bible and advised him to go out to the chapel and get the Bible and show me the place. So out he went for a Bible, and as soon as he stalked into my office with the Bible open, with all the bigoted pride of a narrow sectarian, or of one who founds his Christianity on some misinterpretation of Scripture, he flung the Bible down on my desk and fairly squealed into my ear. There it is, Mr. President, you can read it for yourself, I said to him. Well, young man, you will learn when you get a little older that you cannot trust another denomination to read the Bible for you. You belong to another denomination. You are taught in a theological school, however, that emphasizes the exogenous. Now you will take that Bible and read it yourself, and give it the proper emphasis to it. He took the Bible and proudly read, The love of money is the root of all evil. Then he had it right, and when one does quote a right from the same old book he quotes the Absolute Truth. I have lived through fifty years of the mightiest battle that old book has ever thought, and I have lived to see its banners flying free, for never in the history of this world did the great minds of earth so universally agree that the Bible is true, all true, as they do at this very hour. So I say that when he quoted right, of course he quoted the Absolute Truth. The love of money is the root of all evil. He who tries to attain unto it too quickly or dishonestly will fail into the many snares, no doubt, about that. The love of money, what is that? It is making an idol of money, an idolry, pure and simple. The dollar has condemned by the holy scriptures and by man's common sense. The man that worships the dollar instead of thinking of its purposes for which it ought to be used. The man who idolizes simply money, the miser that horses money in the cellar or hides it in a stocking or refuses to invest it, where it will do the world good. That man who hugs the dollar until the eagle squeals, in him the root of all evil. I think I will leave that behind now and answer the question of nearly all of you who are asking, is there an opportunity to get rich in Philadelphia? Well now, how simple a thing it is to see where it is. The instant you see where it is, it is yours. Some old gentleman gets up there in back and says, Mr. Conwell, have you lived in Philadelphia for 41 years and you don't know that the time has gone when you can make anything in this city? No, I don't think it is. Yes it is, I have tried it. What business are you in? I kept a store here for 20 years and never made over $1,000 in the whole 20 years. Well then, you can measure the good you have been to this city by what the city has paid you, because a man can judge you very well with what he is worth by what he receives. That is, in what he is to the world at this time, if you have not made over $1,000 in 20 years in Philadelphia, it would have been better for Philadelphia if they kicked you out of the city 19 years and 9 months ago. A man has no right to keep a store in Philadelphia 20 years and not make at least $5,000, even though it be a corner grocery uptown, you say. You cannot make $5,000 in a store now, oh my friends, if you will just take only four blocks around you and find out what the people want and what you ought to supply and set them down with your pencil and figure up the profits you would make if you did supply them, you would very soon see it. There is wealth right here within the sound of your voice. Then someone says, you don't know anything about business. A preacher never knows a thing about business. Well then, I will have to prove to you I am an expert. I don't like to do this, but I have to do it, because my testimony will not be taken if I am not an expert. My father kept a country store, and if there is any place under the stars where a man gets all sorts of experience in every kind of mercantile transactions, it is the country store. I am not proud of my experience, but sometimes when my father was away he would leave me in charge of the store, though fortunately for him it was not very often. But this did occur many times, friends. A man would come into the store and say, do you keep jackknives? No, we don't keep jackknives. So, and I went off whistling a tune. What did I care about that man anyhow? And then another farmer would come in and say, do you keep jackknives? No, we don't keep jackknives. Then I went away and whistled another tune. Then a third man came right up to the door and said, do you keep jackknives? No. Why, everyone around here is asking for jackknives. Do you suppose we are keeping the store to supply the whole neighborhood with jackknives? Do you carry on this store like that in Philadelphia? The difficult was I had not learned that the foundation of godliness and the foundation of principle of success in business are both the same, precisely. When a man says I cannot carry my religion into business, he advertises himself either as being an imbecile in business or on the road to bankruptcy or a thief, one of the three. Sure, he will fail within a very few years. He certainly will if he doesn't carry his religion into business. If I had been carrying on my father's store on a Christian plan, godly plan, I would have had a jackknife for the third man when he called for it. Then I would have actually done him a kindness, and I would have received reward myself, which would have been my duty to take. There are some overpious Christian people who think if they take a profit on anything you sell, you are an unrighteous man. On the contrary, you would be a criminal to sell goods for less than they cost. You have no right to do that. You cannot trust a man with your money who cannot take care of his own. You cannot trust a man in your family who is not true to his own wife. You cannot trust a man in the world who does not begin with his own heart, his own character, and his own life. It would have been my duty to have furnished a jackknife to the third man or the second, and to have sold at him and actually profited myself. I would have no more right to sell goods without making a profit on them than I would have to overcharge him dishonestly beyond what they are worth. But I should so sell each bill of goods that the person to whom I sell shall make as much as possible. To live and let live is the principle of the gospel, and the principle of everyday common sense. Oh, young man, hear me. Live as you go along. Do not wait until you have reached my years before you begin to enjoy anything in this life. If I had the millions back, or fifty cents of it which I have tried to earn in these years, it would not do me anything like the good it does me now. In this almost sacred presence tonight—oh, yes, I am paid over a hundredfold tonight for dividing as I have tried to do in some measure as I went along through the years. I ought not speak that way. It sounds agnostic, but I am old enough now to be excused for that. I should have helped my fellow man, which I have tried to do, and everyone should try and do and go get the happiness of it. The man who goes home with a sense that he has stolen a dollar that day, that he has robbed a man of what is his honest do, is not going to sweet rest. He arises tired in the morning and goes with an unclean conscience to his work the next day. He is not a successful man at all. Although he may have laid up millions, but the man who has gone through life dividing, always with his fellow man, making and demanding his own rights and his own profits, and giving away every other man his rights and profit, lives every day. But not only that, but the royal road to great wealth, the history of the thousands of millionaires, shows that to be the case. The man over there, who said he could not make anything in the store in Philadelphia, has been carrying on his store in the wrong principle. I suppose I go unto you store to-morrow, and say, do you know neighbor A. who lives one square away at house number 1240? Oh yes, I have met him. He deals here at the corner store. Where did he come from? I don't know. How many does he have in his family? I don't know. What ticket does he vote? I don't know. What church does he go to? I don't know. And I don't care. Why are you asking all of these questions for? If I had a store in Philadelphia, would you answer me like that? If so, then you are conducting your business, just as I carried on my father's business in Worthington, Massachusetts. You don't know where your neighbor come from when he moved to Philadelphia and you don't care. If you had cared, you would be a rich man now. If you had cared enough about him to take an interest in his affairs, to find out what he needed, you would have been rich. But now you go through the world saying no opportunity to get rich, and there is the fault right at your own door. But another young man gets up over there and says, I cannot take up the mercantile business. While I am talking of trade, it applies to every occupation. Why can't you go into the mercantile business? Because I have in any capital, oh, the weak and dutish creature that can't see over its collar. It makes a person weak to see those little dudes standing around in the corners and saying, oh, if I had plenty of capital, how rich I would get. Young man, do you think you are going to get rich on capital? Certainly. Well, I say certainly not. Your mother has plenty of money, and she will set you up in business. You will set her up in business supplying you with capital. The moment the young man or woman gets more money, then he or she has grown to, by practical experience, the moment he has gotten a curse. It is no help to a young man or woman to inherit money. It is no help to your children to leave them money. But if you leave them education, if you leave them Christian and noble character, if you leave them a wide circle of friends, if you leave them an honorable name, it is far better than they should have money. It would be worse for them, worse for the nation, that they should have money at all. Oh, young man, if you have inherited money, don't regard it as a help. It will curse you through your years and deprive you of the very best things of human life. There is no class of people to be pitied so much as the inexperienced sons and daughters of the rich of our generation. I pity the rich man's son. He can never know the best things in life. One of the best things in life is when a young man has earned his own living, and when he becomes engaged to some lovely young woman and makes up his mind to have a home of his own. Then with that same love comes that divine inspiration toward better things. He begins to save money. He begins to leave off his bad habits and put money in the bank. When he has a few hundred dollars, he goes out to the suburbs to look for a home. He goes to the savings bank, perhaps for half the value, and he goes to his wife and takes the bride over the threshold of that door for the first time, and says the words of eloquence my voice can never touch. I have earned this home myself. It is all mine, and I divide with thee. That is the grandest moment a human heart may ever know. END OF PART 2 PART 3 But a rich man's son can never know that. He takes his bride into a finer mansion, it may be, but he has obliged to go all the way through it and say to his wife, my mother gave me that, my mother gave me that, and my mother gave me this, until his wife wishes he had married his mother. I pity the rich man's son. The statistics of Massachusetts showed that not one rich man's son out of seventeen ever dies rich. I pity the rich man's sons unless they have the good sense of the elder band or build, which sometimes happens. He went to his father and said, Did you earn all your money? I did, my son. I began to work on a ferry boat for twenty-five cents a day. Then, said his son, I will have none of your money. And he, too, tried to get employment on a ferry boat that Saturday night. He could not get one there. But he did get a place for three dollars a week. And of course, if a rich man's son will do that, he will get the discipline of a poor boy. That is worth more than the university education of any man. He would then be able to take care of the millions of his father. But as a rule, the rich men will not let their sons do the very thing that made them great. As a rule, the rich men will not allow his son to work. And his mother, why, she would think it was a social disgrace if a poor weak little, lily-fingered, sissy sort of a boy had to earn his living with honest toil. I have no pity for such rich men's sons. I remember one at Niagara Falls. I think I remember one a great deal nearer. I think there are gentlemen present who were at a great banquet and I beg pardon of his friends. At a banquet here in Philadelphia there sat Besine be a kind-hearted young man. And he said, Mr. Conwell, you have been sick for two or three years. When you go out, take my limousine, and it will take you up to your house on Broad Street. I thanked him very much, and perhaps I ought not mention the incident in this way. But I follow the facts. I got on the seat with the driver of the limousine outside, and when we were going up, I asked the driver, how much did this limousine cost? 6,800. And he had to pay the duty on it. Well, I said, does the owner of this machine ever drive it himself? At that the chauffeur laughed so heartily that he lost control of his machine. He was so surprised at the question that he ran up on the sidewalk, and around the corner lamppost, out onto the street again. And when he got out onto the street, he laughed till the whole machine trembled. He said, he drive this machine? Oh, he would be lucky if he knew enough to get out when we get there. I must tell you about a rich man's son at Niagara Falls. I came in from the lecture to the hotel, and as I approached the desk there stood a millionaire's son from New York. He was an indiscernible specimen of anthropologic potency. He had a skullcap on one side of his head with a gold tassel in the top of it, and a gold-headed cane under his arm with more in it than in his head. It was a very difficult thing to describe that man. He wore an eyeglass that he could not see through patent leather boots, that he could not walk in, and pants that he could not sit down in, dressed like a grasshopper. His human cricket came up to the clerk's desk just as I entered, adjust his unseeing eyeglass, and spake in this wise to the clerk. You see, he thought it was hinglish, you know, to lisp. There will I have your kindness to supply me thumb-paper and thumb-envelope. The clerk measured that man quick, and pulled out the envelopes and thumb-paper out of a drawer, threw them across the counter toward the young man, and then turned away to his book. You should have seen that young man when those envelopes came across the counter. He swelled like a gobbler turkey, adjusted his unseeing eyeglass, and yelled, come right back here, and now there. Will you order a thervent to take that paper and envelopes to your desk? Oh, the poor, miserable, contemptible American monkey! He could not carry paper and envelopes twenty feet. I suppose he could not get his arms down to it. I have no pity for such travesties upon human nature. If you have not capital, young man, I am glad of it. What you need is common sense, not copper sense. The best thing I can do is to illustrate by actual facts well known to all of you. A.T. Stewart, a poor boy in New York, had $1.50 to begin life on. He lost 87.5 cents of that on his very first venture. How fortunate that young man who loses the first time he gambles. That boy said, I will never gamble again in business, and he never did. How can you lose 87.5 cents? You probably all know the story, how he lost it, because he bought some needles, threads, and buttons to sell, which people did not want, and had left him on his hands a dead loss. Said the boy, I will not lose any more money in that way. Then he went around first to the doors and asked the people what they did want. Then, when he had found what they wanted, he invested his 62.5 cents to supply a known demand. Study it wherever you choose, in business, in your profession, in your housekeeping, whatever your life, that one thing is the secret of success. You must first know the demand. You must first know what people need, and then invest yourself where it is most needed. A.T. Stewart went on that principle until he was worth what amounted afterward to forty millions of dollars, owning the very store in which Mr. Wanamaker carries on his great work in New York. This fortune was made by his losing something, which taught him the great lesson that he must only invest himself or his money in something that people need. When will you salesmen learn that? When will you manufacturers learn that you must know the changing needs of humanity if you would succeed in life? Apply yourselves, all you Christian people, as manufacturers or merchants or workmen, to supply that human need. That is a great principle as broad as humanity and as deep as the scripture itself. The best illustration I have ever heard was of John Jacob Astor. You know that he made his money of the Astor family, and when he lived in New York he came across the sea in debt for his fare, but that poor boy, with nothing in his pocket, made the fortune of the Astor family on one principle. Young, young men here tonight will say, well, they could make that fortune in New York, but they could not do it in Philadelphia. My friends, did you ever read that wonderful book of Raius? His memory is sweet to us because of his recent death, wherein is given his statistical account of the records taken in 1889 of one hundred and seven millionaires of New York. If you read the account you will see that out of one hundred and seven millionaires only seven made their money in New York. Out of the one hundred and seven millionaires worth ten million dollars in real estate, then sixty-seven of them made their money in towns of less than three thousand five hundred inhabitants. The richest men in this country today, if you read the real estate values, has never moved away from the town of three thousand five hundred inhabitants. It makes not so much difference where you are as who you are, but if you cannot get rich in Philadelphia you certainly cannot do it in New York. Now John Jacob Astor illustrated what can be done anywhere. He had a mortgage once on a millinery store, and they could not sell bonnets enough to pay the interest on his money. So he foreclosed that mortgage, took possession of the store, and went into partnership with the very same people in the same store with the same capital. He did not give them a dollar of capital. They had to sell goods to get any money. Then he left them alone in the store just as they had been before. And he went out and sat down on a bench in a park in the shade. What was John Jacob Astor doing out there, and in partnership with people who had failed on their own hands? He had the most important, and in my mind the most pleasant part of that partnership on his hands. For as John Jacob Astor sat on that bench, he was watching the ladies as they went by. And where is the man who would not get rich in that business? As he sat on the bench, if a lady passed him with her shoulders back and head up, and looked straight to the front, as if she did not care if all the world did not gaze on her. Then he studied her bonnet, and by the time she was out of sight, he knew the shape of the frame, the color of the trimmings, the cracklings of the feather. I sometimes tried to describe a bonnet, but not always. I would not try and describe a modern bonnet. Where is the man that can describe one? This aggression of all sorts of driftwood stuck in the back of the head, on the side of the neck, like a rooster, with only one tail and feather left. But in John Jacob Astor's day, there was some art about the millinery business, and he went to the millinery store and said to them, Now put into the show window, just such a bonnet as I described to you, because I have already seen a lady who likes such a bonnet. Don't make up any more until I come back. Then he went out and sat down again, and another lady passed him of a different form, of different complexion, with a different shape and color of bonnet. Now, said he, put such a bonnet as that in the show window. He did not fill the show window, uptown, with lots of hats and bonnets to drive people away, and then sit on the back stairs and ball, because people went to Wanamakers to trade. He did not have a hat or bonnet in that show window, but what some lady liked before it was made up. The tide of custom began immediately to turn in, and it had been a foundation of the greatest store in New York. In that line there still exists one of three stores. Its fortune was made by John Jacob Astor, after they failed in business, not by giving them any more money, but by finding out what ladies liked for bonnets before they wasted any material in making them up. I tell you, if a man could foresee the millenary business, he could foresee anything under heaven. I suppose I were to go up through the audience tonight and ask you, in this great manufacturing city, if there were any opportunities to get rich in manufacturing. Oh yes, some young men says. There are opportunities here still, if you build with some trust, and if you have two or three millions of dollars to begin with as capital. Young men, the history of the breaking up of trusts, by that attack upon big business, is only illustrating what is now the opportunity of the smaller man. The time never came in the history of the world when you could not get rich by quickly manufacturing without capital as you can now. What you will say. You cannot do anything of the kind. You cannot start without capital, young men. Let me illustrate for a moment. I must do it. It is my duty to every young man and woman, because we are all going into business very soon on the same plan. Young man, remember if you know what people need, and you have gotten more knowledge of the fortune than any amount of capital can give you. There was a young man out of work living in Hingham, Massachusetts. He lounged around the house until one day his wife told him to get out and work, and as he lived in Massachusetts he obeyed his wife. He went out and sat down on the shore of the bay and whittled a soaked shingle out into a wooden chain. His children that evening quarreled over it, and he whittled a second one to keep peace. While he was whittling the second one a neighbor came in and said, Why don't you whittle toys and sell them? You could make money at that. Oh, he said, I would not know what to make. Why don't you ask your own children right here in your own house what to make? What is the use of trying that? said the carpenter. My children are different from other people's children. I used to see people like that when I taught school. But he acted upon the hint, and the next morning when Mary came down the stairway he asked, What do you want for a toy? She began to tell him she would like a doll's bed, a doll's wash shed, a doll's carriage, a little doll's umbrella, and went on with a list of things that it would take a lifetime to supply. So consulting his own children in his own house he took the firewood, for he had no money to buy lumber, and whittled those strong, unpainted, hingum toys that were for so many years known all over the world. That man began to make those toys for his own children and then made copies and sold them through the boot and shoe store next door. He began to make a little money, and then a little more. And Mr. Lawson, in his frenzied finance, says that a man can be the richest man in old Massachusetts, and I think it is the truth. And that man is worth a hundred millions of dollars today. He has been only thirty-four years making it, on that one principle, that one must judge what his own children like at other people's children would like in their homes, too. To judge the human heart by one's self, by one's wife, or one's children, it is the royal row to success in manufacturing. Oh, but you say, he didn't have any capital? Yes, a penknife, but I don't know what he had paid for it. I spoke thus to an audience in New Britain, Connecticut. And the lady four-seat back went home and tried to take off her collar, and the collar button stuck in the buttonhole. She threw it out and said, I'm going to get up something better than that to put on collars, her husband said. But after what Conwell said to-night, you see, there is a need for an improved collar fastener that is easier to handle. There is a human need. There is a great fortune. Now then, get up a collar button and get rich. He made fun of her. And consequently made fun of me. And that is one of the saddest things which ever comes over me like a deep cloud of midnight sometimes, although I have worked so hard for more than half a century, yet how little I have ever really done, notwithstanding the greatness and the handsomeness of your compliment to-night. I do not believe there is one in ten of you that is going to make a million dollars because you are here to-night. But that is not my fault, it is yours. I say that sincerely. What is the use of my talking if people never do it when I advise them to do? When her husband ridiculed her, she made up her mind that she would make a better collar button. And when a woman makes up her minds, she will. And does not say anything about it. She does it. It was that New England woman who invented the snap button, which you can find anywhere now. It was first a collar button, with a spring cap attached to the outer side. Any of you who wear modern waterproofs know that button simply pushes together, and when you unbutton it you simply pull it apart. That is the button to which I refer, and which she invented. She afterward invented several other buttons, and then invested in more. And then she was taken into partnership with great factories. Now that woman goes over the sea every summer in her private steamship. Yes, and takes her husband with her. If her husband were to die, she would have enough money left now to buy a foreign duke, or count, or some other such title that is at the latest quotations. Now what sort of lesson in that incident? It is this. I told her then, though I did not know her, what I now say to you. Your wealth is so near you, you are looking right over it. And she had to look over it because it was right under her chin. I have read in the newspaper that a woman never invented anything, while that newspaper ought to begin again. Of course I do not refer to gossip, I refer to machines. And if I might better include the man, that newspaper could never appear if a woman had not invented something. Friends think, ye women think, you cannot make a fortune because you are in some laundry or running a sewing machine. It may be, or walking before some loom. And yet you can be a millionaire if you just follow this almost infallible direction. When you say a woman doesn't invent anything, I ask, who invented the jacquard loom that wove every stitch you wear? Mrs. jacquard, the printer's roller, the printing press, were invented by farmers' wives. Who invented the cotton gin of the south that enriched our country so amazingly? Mrs. General Green invented the cotton gin, and showed the idea to Mr. Whitney. And he, like a man, seized it. Who was it that invented the sewing machine? If I would go to school tomorrow and ask your children, they would say, Elias, how? He was in the Civil War with me, and often in my tent I often heard him say that he worked fourteen years to get up that sewing machine, but his wife made up her mind that one day they would starve to death if there wasn't something or other invented pretty soon. So in two hours she invented the sewing machine. Of course, he took out the patented in his name. Men always do that. Who was it who invented the mower and the reaper? According to Mr. McCormick's confidential communications so recently published, it was a West Virginia woman who, after his father and he had failed altogether in making a reaper and gave it up, took a lot of shears and nailed them together on the edge of a board, with one shaft of each pair loose, and then wired them so when she pulled the wire one way it closed down and when she pulled the wire the other way it opened. Then and there she had the principle of the mowing machine. If you look at the mowing machine you will see that it is nothing but a lot of shears. If a woman can invent a mowing machine, if a woman can invent a jacquard loom, if a woman can invent a cotton gin, if a woman can invent a trolley switch, as she did and made the trolley's possible, if a woman can invent, as Mr. Carnegie said, the great iron squeezers that laid the foundation of all the steel millions in the United States, we men can invent anything under the stars. I say that for the encouragement of the men. Who are the great inventors of the world? Again, this lesson comes before us. The great inventor sits next to you, or you are the person yourself. Oh, but you will say I have never invented anything in my life. Neither did the great inventors, until they discovered one great secret. Do you think it is a man with a head like a bushel measure, or a man like a stroke of lightning? It is neither. A really great man is a plain straightforward everyday common sense man. You would not dream that he was a great inventor, if you did not see something that he had actually done. His neighbors do not regard him as so great. You never see anything great over your back fence. You say there is no greatness among your neighbors. It is all a way off somewhere else. Their greatness is so ever simple, so plain, so earnest, so practical, that the neighbors and friends would never recognize it. Part three. Part four of Acres of Diamonds. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Acres of Diamonds by Russell H. Conwell, part four. Your greatness is often unrecognized, that is sure. You do not know anything about the greatest men and women. I went out to write the Life of General Garfield, and a neighbor, knowing I was in a hurry, and as there was a great crowd around the front door, took me around to General Garfield's back door and shouted, Jim, Jim! And very soon Jim came to the door and let me in, and I wrote the biography of one of the grandest men of the nation. And yet he was just the same old Jim to his neighbor. If you know a great man in Philadelphia and you should meet him tomorrow, you would say, how are you, Sam, or good morning, Jim? Of course you would. That is just what you would do. One of my soldiers in the Civil War had been sentenced to death, and I went up to the White House in Washington, sent there for the first time in my life to see the president. I went into the waiting room and sat down with a lot of others on the benches, and the secretary asked one after another to tell him what they wanted. After the secretary had been through the line, he went in and then came back to the door in motion for me. I went up to that anti-room, and the secretary said, that is the president's door right over there. Just wrap on it and go right in. I never was so taken aback, friends, in all my life, never. The secretary himself made it worse for me because he had told me how to go in and then went out the other door on the left and shut that. There I was in the hallway by myself before the president of the United States of America's door. I'd been on fields of battle where the shells did sometimes shriek and the bullets did sometimes hit me. But I always wanted to run. I have no sympathy with the old man who says I would just as soon march up to the cannon's mouth as eat my dinner. And I have no faith in a man who doesn't know enough to be afraid when he's being shot at. I never was so afraid when the shells came around us at Antietam as I was when I went to that room that day. But I finally mustered the courage. I don't know how I ever did. And at arm's length tapped on the door. The man inside did not help me at all, but yelled out, come in and sit down. Well, I went in and sat down on the edge of a chair and wished I were in Europe. And the man at the table did not look up. He was one of the world's greatest men and was made great by one single rule. Oh, that all the young people of Philadelphia were before me now, and I could say just this one thing and that they would remember it. I would give a lifetime for the effect it would have on our city and on civilization. Abraham Lincoln's principle for greatness can be adopted by nearly all. This was his rule. Whatsoever he had to do at all, he put his whole mind into it and held it all there until that was all done. That makes men great almost anywhere. He stuck to those papers at the table and did not look up at me, and I sat there trembling. Finally, when he had put the string around his papers, he pushed them over to one side and looked over to me, and a smile came over his worn face. And he said, I'm a very busy man and have only a few minutes to spare. Now tell me in the fewest words what it is you'll want. I began to tell him and mention the case. And he said, I have heard all about it, and you do not need to say any more. Mr. Stanton was talking to me only a few days ago about that. You can go to the hotel and rest assured that the president never did sign an order to shoot a boy under 20 years of age and never will. You can say that to his mother anyhow. And then he said to me, how is it going in the field? I said, we sometimes get discouraged. And he said, it is all right. We're getting very near the light. No man ought to wish to be president of the United States. And I will be glad when I get through. Then Tad and I are going out to Springfield, Illinois. I have bought a farm out there, and I don't care if I again earn only 25 cents a day. Tad has a mule team, and we're going to plant onions. Then he asked me, were you brought up on a farm? I said, yes, in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts. He then threw his leg over the corner of the big chair and said, I have heard many a time ever since I was young that up there in those hills you have to sharpen the noses of the sheep in order to get down to the grass between the rocks. He was so familiar, so every day, so farmer-like, that I fell right at home with him at once. He then took hold of another roll of paper and looked up at me and said, good morning. I took the hint then and got up and went out. After I'd gotten out, I could not realize I had seen the president of the United States at all. But a few days later, when still in the city, I saw the crowd pass through the east room by the coffin of Abraham Lincoln. And when I looked at the upturned face of the murdered president, I felt then that the man I had seen such a short time before, who so simple a man, so plain a man, was one of the greatest men that God ever raised up to lead a nation on to ultimate liberty. Yet he was only old Abe to his neighbors. When they had the second funeral, I was invited among others and went out to see that same coffin put back in the tomb at Springfield. Around the tomb stood Lincoln's old neighbors, to whom he was just old Abe. Of course, that was all they would say. Did you ever see a man who struts around altogether too large to notice an ordinary working mechanic? Do you think he is great? He's nothing but a puffed up balloon held down by his big feet. There is no greatness there. Who are the great men and women? My attention was called the other day to the history of a very little thing that made the fortune of a very poor man. It was an awful thing. And yet because of that experience, he, not a great inventor or genius, invented the pin that is now called the safety pin. And out of that safety pin made the fortune of one of the great aristocratic families of this nation. A poor man in Massachusetts who had worked in the nail works was injured at 38 and he could earn but little money. He was employed in the office to rub out the marks on the bills made by pencil memorandums. And he used a rubber until his hand grew tired. He then tired a piece of rubber on the end of a stick and worked it like a plane. His little girl came and said, why you have a patent, haven't you? The father said afterward, my daughter told me when I took that stick and put the rubber on the end that there was a patent and that was the first thought of that. He went to Boston and applied for his patent and every one of you that has a rubber tipped pencil in your pocket is now paying tribute to the millionaire. No capital, not a penny did he invest in it. All was income all the way up into the millions. But let me hasten to one other greater thought. Show me the great men and women who live in Philadelphia. A gentleman over there will get up and say, we don't have any great men in Philadelphia. They don't live here. They live away off in Rome or St. Petersburg or London or many or anywhere else but here in our town. I have come now to the apex of my thought. I have come now to the heart of the whole matter and to the center of my struggle. Why isn't Philadelphia a greater city in its greater wealth? Why does New York excel Philadelphia? People say because of our harbor. Why do many other cities of the United States get ahead of Philadelphia now? There's only one answer and that is because our own people talk down their own city. If there ever was a community on earth that has to be forced ahead, it's the city of Philadelphia. If we were to have a boulevard, talk it down. If we are going to have better schools, talk them down. If you wish to have wise legislation, talk it down. Talk all the proposed improvements down. That is the only great wrong that I can lay at the feet of the magnificent Philadelphia that has been so universally kind to me. I say it's time we turn around in our city and begin to talk up the things that are in our city and begin to set them before the world as the people of Chicago, New York, St. Louis and San Francisco do. Oh, if we could only get that spirit out among our people that we can do things in Philadelphia and do them well. Arise ye millions of Philadelphians, trust in God and man and believe in the great opportunities that are right here, not over in New York or Boston, but here for business, for everything that it's worth living for on earth. There never was an opportunity greater. Let us talk up our own city. But there are two other young men here tonight and that is all I will venture to say because it is too late. One over there gets up and says there's going to be a great man in Philadelphia but never was one. Oh, is that so? When are you going to be great? What I'm elected to some political office. Young man, won't you learn a lesson in the perimeter of politics that is a prima facie evidence of littleness to hold office under our form of government. Great men get into office sometimes but what this country needs is men that will do what we tell them to do. This nation where the people rule is governed by the people for the people. And so long as it is, then the office holder is but the servant of the people. And the Bible says the servant cannot be greater than the master. The Bible says he that is sent cannot be greater than him who sent him. The people rule or should rule and if they do, we do not need the greater men in office. If the great men in America took our offices we would change to an empire in the next 10 years. I know of a great many young women now that women's suffrage is coming who say I'm going to be president of the United States some day. I believe in women's suffrage and there is no doubt of what it is coming. And I'm getting out of the way anyhow. I may want an office by and by myself but if the ambition for an office influences the women in their desire to vote I want to say right here what I say to the young men that if you only get the privilege of casting one vote you don't get anything that's worthwhile. Unless you can control more than one vote you will be unknown and your influence so dissipated that's practically not to be felt. This country is not run by votes. Do you think it is? It is governed by influence. It is governed by the ambitious and the enterprises which control votes. The young woman that thinks she is going to vote for the sake of holding an office is making an awful blunder. That other young man gets up and says there are going to be great men in this country and in Philadelphia. Is that so? When? When there comes a great war when we get into difficulty through watchful waiting in Mexico when we get into war with England over some frivolous deed or with Japan or China or New Jersey or some distant country then I will march up to the cannon's mouth I will sweep up among the glistening bayonets I will leap into the arena and tear down the flag and bear it away in triumph I will come home with stars on my shoulder and hold every office in the gift of the nation and I will be great. No, you won't. You think you're going to be made great by an office but remember that if you are not great before you get the office you won't be great when you secure it. It will only be a burlesque in that shape. We had a peace jubilee here after the Spanish war. Out west, they don't believe this because they said Philadelphia would not have heard of any Spanish war until 50 years hence. Some of you saw the procession go up broad street. I was away but the family wrote to me that the Tally Ho coach, the Lieutenant Hobson upon it stopped right in front of the door and people shouted, a raw for Hobson. And if I had been there I would have yelled too because he deserves much more of his country than he's ever received. But suppose I go into school and say who sunk the Merrimack at Santiago? And if the boys answer me Hobson they will tell me seven eighths of a lie. There were seven other heroes on that steamer and they by virtue of their position were continually exposed to Spanish fire while Hobson as an officer might reasonably be behind the smokestack. You have gathered in this house your most intelligent people and yet perhaps not one here could name the other seven men. We ought not to so teach history. We ought to teach that however humble a man station may be if he does his full duty in that place he is just as much entitled to the American people's honor as is the king upon his throne. But we do not so teach. We are now teaching everywhere that the generals do all the fighting. I remember that after the war I went down to see General Robert E. Lee that magnificent Christian gentleman of whom both North and South are now proud as one of our great Americans. The general told me about his servant Rastus who was an enlisted colored soldier. He called him in one day to make fun of him and said Rastus I hear that all the rest of your company are killed and why are you not killed? Rastus winked at him and said because when there's any fighting going on I stay back with the generals. I remember another illustration. I would leave it out but for the fact that when you go to the library to read this lecture you will find that this has been printed in it for 25 years. I shut my eyes, shut them close and lo I see the faces of my youth. Yes sometimes they say to me your hair is not white. You're working night and day without seeming ever to stop. You can't be old. But when I shut my eyes like any other man of my years I'll then come tripping back the faces of the loved and lost a long ago and I know whatever men may say it is evening time. I shut my eyes now and look back to my native town in Massachusetts and I see the cattle show ground on the mountain top. I can see the horse sheds there. I can see the congregational church see the town hall and the mountaineer's cottages. See a great assembly of people turning out dressed resplendently and I can see flags flying and handkerchiefs waving and hear bands playing. I can see that company of soldiers that had reenlisted marching up on that cattle show ground. I was but a boy but I was captain of that company and puffed out with pride. A cambrick needle would have burst me all the pieces. Then I thought it was the greatest event that ever came to man on earth. If you have ever thought you would like to be a king or queen, you go and be received by the mayor. The bands played and the people turned out to receive us. I marched up by common so proud at the head of my troops and we turned down into the town hall. Then they seated my soldiers down the center aisle and I sat down on the front seat. A great assembly of people, 100 or two, came in to fill the town hall so that they stood up all around. Then the town officers came in and formed a half circle. The mayor of the town sat in the middle of the platform. He was a man who had never held office before but he was a good man and his friends have told me that I might use this without giving them offense. He was a good man but he fought and office made a man great. He came up, took his seat, adjusted his powerful spectacles and looked around when he suddenly spied me sitting there on the front seat. He came right forward on the platform and invited me up to sit with the town officers. No town officer ever took any notice of me before I went to war except to advise the teacher to thrash me and now I was invited up on the stand with the town officers. Oh my, the town mayor was then the emperor, the king of our day and our time. As I came up on the platform, they gave me a chair about this far, I would say from the front. When I had got seated, the chairman of the select admin rose and came forward to the table and we all supposed he would introduce the congregational minister who was the only orator in town and that he would give the oration to the returning soldiers. But friends, you should have seen the surprise which ran over the audience when they discovered that the old fellow was going to deliver that speech himself. He had never made a speech in his life but he fell into the same error that hundreds of other men have fallen into. It seems so strange that a man won't learn he must speak his pieces, oh boy, if he intends to be an orator when he is grown. But he seems to think all he has to do is hold an office to be a great orator. So he came up to the front and brought with him a speech which he had learned by heart, walking up and down the pasture where he had frightened the cattle. He brought the manuscript with him, spread it out on the table so as to be sure he might see it. He adjusted his spectacles and leaned over it for a moment and marched back on the platform and then came forward like this, tramp, tramp, tramp. He must have studied the subject a great deal when you come to think of it because he assumed an elocutionary attitude. He rested heavily on his left heel through back his shoulders, slightly advanced the right foot, opened the organs of speech and advanced his right foot at an angle of 45. As he stood in that elocutionary attitude, friends, this is the way that speech went. Now, some people say to me, don't you exaggerate? That would be impossible. But I am here for the lesson and not for the story. And this is the way it went. Fellow citizens, as soon as he heard his voice, his fingers began to go like that, his knees began to shake, and then he trembled all over. He choked and swallowed and came around to the table to look at the manuscript. Then he gathered himself up with clenched fists and came back. Fellow citizens, fellow citizens, we are very happy, we are very happy, we are very happy, we are very happy, we are very happy. We are very happy to welcome back to their native town these soldiers who have fought and bled and come back again to their native town. We are especially, we are especially, we are especially, we are especially pleased to see with us today this young hero that met me, this young hero who in imagination, friends remember he said that. If he had not said in imagination, I would not be egotistic enough to refer to it at all. This young hero who in imagination, we have seen leading, we have seen leading, leading. We have seen leading his troops onto the deadly breach. We have seen his shining, we have seen his shining sword flashing, flashing in the sunlight as he shouted to his troops, come on. Oh dear, dear, dear, how little that good man knew about war. If he had known anything about war at all, he ought to have known what any of my GAR comrades here tonight will tell you is true, that it is next to a crime for an officer of infantry ever in time of danger to go ahead of his men. I, with my shining sword flashing in the sunlight, shouting to my troops, come on. I never did it. Do you suppose I would get in front of my men to be shot in front by the enemy and in the back by my own men? That is no place for an officer. The place for the officer in actual battle is behind the line. How often as a staff officer, I wrote down the line when our men were suddenly called to the line of battle and the rebel yells were coming out of the woods and shouted officers to the rear, officers to the rear. Then every officer gets behind the line of private soldiers and the higher the officers ranked, the farther behind he goes. Not because he is any the less brave, but because the laws of war require that. And yet he shouted, I with my shining sword. In that house, there sent the company of my soldiers who would carry that boy across the Carolina rivers that he might not wet his feet. Some of them had gone far out to get a pig or a chicken. Some of them had gone to death. Under the shell swept pines in the mountains of Tennessee. Yet in the good man's speech, they were scarcely known. He did refer to them, but only incidentally. The hero of the hour was this boy. Did the nation owe him anything? No, nothing then, nothing now. Why was he the hero? Simply because that man fell into the same human error that this boy was great because he was an officer and these were only private soldiers. Oh, I learned the lesson then that I will never forget so long as the tongue of the bell of time continues to swing for me. Greatness consists not in the holding of some future office, but really consists in doing great deeds with little means and the accomplishment of vast purposes from the private ranks of life. To be great at all, one must be great here, now in Philadelphia. He who can give to this city better streets and better sidewalks, better schools and more colleges, more happiness and more civilization, more of God, he will be great anywhere. Let every man or woman hear. If you never hear me again, remember this, that if you wish to be great at all, you must begin where you are and what you are in Philadelphia now. He that can give to his city any blessing, he who can be a good citizen while he lives here, he that can make better homes, he that can be a blessing whether he works in the shop or sits behind the counter or keeps house, whatever be his life. He who would be great anywhere must first be great in his own Philadelphia. End of part four. Part five of Acres of Diamonds. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Acres of Diamonds by Russell H. Conwell. Part five, His Life and Achievements by Robert Shackleton. One, The Story of the Sword. I shall write of a remarkable man, an interesting man, a man of power, of initiative, of will, of persistence. A man who plans vastly and who realizes his plans. A man who not only does things for himself, but who ever more important than that is the constant inspiration of others. I shall write of Russell H. Conwell as a farmer's boy. He was the leader of the boys of the Rocky region that was his home. As a schoolteacher, he won devotion. As a newspaper correspondent, he gained fame. As a soldier in the Civil War, he rose to important rank. As a lawyer, he developed a large practice. As an author, he wrote books that reached a mighty total of sales. He left the law for the ministry and is the active head of a great church that he raised from nothingness. He is the most popular lecturer in the world and yearly speaks to many thousands. He is, so to speak, the discoverer of acres of diamonds, through which thousands of men and women have achieved success out of failure. He is the head of two hospitals, one of them founded by himself, that have cared for a host of patients, both the poor and the rich, irrespective of race or creed. He is the founder and head of a university that has already had tens of thousands of students. His home is in Philadelphia, but he is known in every corner of every state of the union and everywhere he has hosts of friends. All his life he has helped and inspired others. Quite by chance and only yesterday, literally yesterday and by chance, and with no thought of the moment of Conwell. Although he had been much in my mind for some time past, I picked up a thin little book of description by William Dean Howells and turning the pages of a chapter on Lexington, Old Lexington of the Revolution, written so Howells had set down in 1882. I noticed after he had written the town and itself and of the long past fight there, and of the present day aspect that he mentioned the church life of the place and remarked on the striking advances made by the Baptist who had lately, as he expressed it, been reconstituted out of very perishing fragments and made strong and flourishing under the ministrations of a lay preacher, formerly a colonel in the Union Army. And it was only a few days before I chanced upon this description that Dr. Conwell, the former colonel and former lay preacher, had told me of his experiences in that little old revolutionary town. Howells went on to say that so he was told the colonel's success was principally due to his making the church attractive to young people. Howells says no more of him. Apparently he did not go out to hear him and one wonders if he had ever associated that lay preacher of Lexington with the famous Russell H. Conwell of these recent years. Attractive to young people. Yes, one can recognize that today, just as it was recognized in Lexington, and it may be added that he at the same time attracts older people too. In this indeed lies his power. He makes his church interesting, his sermons interesting, his lectures interesting. He is himself interesting. Because of his being interesting, he gains attention. The attention gained he inspires. Biography is more than dates. Dates after all are but milestones along the real road of life. And the most important fact from Conwell's life is that he lived to be 82, working 16 hour days every day for a good of his fellow man. He was born on February 15, 1843, born of poor parents in a low-roofed cottage in the Eastern Berkshires in Massachusetts. I was born in this room, he said to me, simply as we sat together recently in front of the old fireplace in the principal room of the little cottage. For he has bought back the rocky farm of his father and has retained and restored the little old home. I was born in this room. It was bedroom and kitchen. It was poverty. And his voice sank with the kind of grimness into silence. Then he spoke a little of the struggles of those long past years. And we went out to the porch as the evening shadow fell. He looked out over the valley and streamed and hills of his youth. And he told of his grandmother and of a young Marylander who had come to the region on a visit was the tale of the impetuous love of those two, of rash marriage, of the interference of parents, of the fierce rivalry of another suitor, of an attack on the Marylander's life, of passionate hastiness and unforgivable words, of separation of lifelong sorrow. Why does grandmother cry so often, he remembers, asking when he was a little boy? And he was told it was for the husband of her youth. We went back into the little house and he showed me the room in which he first saw John Brown. I came down early one morning and saw a huge hairy man sprawled upon the bed there and I was frightened, he says. But John Brown did not long threaten him for he was much at their home after that and was so friendly with Russell and his brother that there was no chance for awe. And it gives a curious sidelight on the character of the stern abolitionist that he actually with infinite patience taught the old horse of the Conwells to go home along with the wagon after leaving the boys at school a mile or more away and at school closing time to trot gently off for them without a driver when merely faced in that direction and told to go. Conwell remembers how John Brown in training it used patiently to walk besides the horse in control it's going and turning until it was quite ready to go and turn by itself. The Conwell house was a station on the underground railroad and Russell Conwell remembers when a lad seeing the escaping slaves that his father had driven across the country and temporarily hidden. Those were heroic days, he says quietly. And once in a while my father let me go with him. They were wonderful night drives the cowering slaves, the darkness of the road the caution and silence and dread of it all. This underground route he remembers was from Philadelphia to New Haven thence to Springfield where Conwell's father would take his charge and onward the bellows falls and Canada. Conwell tells to a meeting Frederick Douglass the colored orator in that little cottage on the hills. I never saw my father Douglass said one day his father was a white man and I remember little of my mother except that once she tried to keep an overseer from whipping me and the lash cut across her own face and her blood fell over me. When John Brown was captured Conwell went on my father tried to sell this place to get a little money to send to help his defense but he couldn't sell it and on the day of the execution we now solemnly hear from 11 to 12 just praying praying in silence for the passing soul of John Brown and as we prayed we knew that others were praying for the church bell toll during that entire hour and its awesome boom went sadly sounding over these hills. Conwell believes that his real life dates from a happening of the time of the civil war a happening that still looms vivid and intense before him of which undoubtedly did deepen and strengthen his strong and deep nature yet the real Conwell was always essentially the same neighborhood tradition still tells of his bravery as a boy and a youth of reckless coasting his skill as a swimmer and saving of lives his strength and endurance is plunging out into the darkness of wild winter night to save a neighbor's cattle his soldiers came home with tales of his devotion to them and how he shared his rations and his blankets and bravely risk his life of how he crept off into a swamp at intimate peril to rescue one of the men lost or mired there the present Conwell was always Conwell in fact he may be traced through his ancestry too for in him there are sturdy virtues the bravery the grim determination the practicality of his father and romanticism that comes from his grandmother and the dreamy qualities of his mother who practical and hardworking New England woman that she was was the same time influenced by an almost startling mysticism and Conwell himself is a dreamer first of all he is a dreamer it is the most important fact in regard to him it is because he is a dreamer and visualizes his dreams that he can plan the great things that to other men would seem impossibilities and then his intensely practical side his intense efficiency his power his skill his patience his fine earnestness his mastery over others develop his dreams into reality he dreams dreams and sees visions but his visions are never visionary and his dreams become fact the rocky hills which meant a dogged struggle for very existence the fugitive slaves John Brown what a school for youth and that literal school was a tiny one room schoolhouse where young Conwell came under the care of a teacher who realized the boys unusual capabilities and was able to give him broad and unusual help then a wise country preacher also recognized the unusual and urged the parents to give still more education whereupon supreme effort was made and young Russell was sent to Wilbraham Academy he likes to tell of his life there and of the hardships of which he makes life and of the joy with which weekend pies and cakes were received from home he tells of how he went out on the road selling books from house to house and how eagerly he devoured the contents of the sample books that he carried they were the foundation of learning for me he says soberly and they gave me a broad idea of the world he went to Yale in 1860 but the outbreak of the war interfered with college and he enlisted in 1861 but he was only 18 and his father objected and he went back to Yale but next year he again enlisted and the men of his Brookshire neighborhood likewise enlisting insisted that he be their captain and Governor Andrews appealed to consented to commission of the 19 year old youth who was so evidently a natural leader and the man gave freely of their scant money to get for him a sword all gay and splendid with guilt upon the sword was the declaration in stately Latin that true friendship is eternal and with that sword is associated the most vivid and momentous experience of Russell Conwell's life the sword hangs at the head of Conwell's bed in his home in Philadelphia man of peace that he is minister of peace that symbol of war has for over half a century been of infinite importance to him he told me the story as we stood together before that sword and he has told the story speaking with quiet repression but seeing it all and living it all just as vividly as if it occurred but yesterday that sword has meant so much to me, he murmured and then he began to tell a boy up there in the Brookshires a neighbor's son was John Ring I call him a boy for we all called him a boy and we looked upon him as a boy he was undersized and underdeveloped so much that he could not enlist but for some reason he was devoted to me and he not only wanted to enlist but he wanted to be in the artillery company of which I was captain and I could only take him along as my servant I didn't want a servant but it is the only way I could take along were little Johnny Ring Johnny was deeply religious and would read the Bible every evening before turning in in those days I was an atheist or at least thought I was and I used to laugh at Ring and after a while he took to reading the Bible outside the tent on account of my laughing at him but he could not stop reading it and his faithfulness to me remained unchanged the scabbard of the sword was too glistening for the regulations the ghost of the smile hovered on Conwell's lips and I could not wear it I could only wear a plain one for service and keep this hanging in my tin on a tent pole John Ring used to handle it adoringly and kept it polished to brilliancy it's dull enough these many years he added somberly to ring it represented not only his captain but the very glory and pomp of war one day the Confederates suddenly stormed our position near New Bern and swept through the camp driving our entire force before them and all including my company retreated hurriedly across the river setting fire to a long wooden bridge as we went over as soon as it blazed up furiously making a barrier that the Confederates could not pass but unknown to everybody and unnoticed John Ring had dashed back to my tent I think he was able to make his way back because he looked like a mere boy but however that was he got past the Confederates into my tent and took down from where it was hanging on the tent pole my bright gold-scattered sword John Ring seized the sword that had been so long precious to him he dodged here and there and actually managed to gain the bridge just as it was beginning to blaze he started across the flames were every moment getting fiercer, the smoke denser and now and then as he crawled and staggered on he leaned for a few seconds far over the edge of that bridge in an effort to get air both sides saw him and both sides watched his terrible progress even while firing was fiercely kept up from either side of the river and then a Confederate officer he was one of General Pickett's officers ran to the water's edge and waved a white-hanger chiff and the firing ceased tell that boy to come back here he cried tell him to come back here and I will let him go free he called out just as Ring was about to enter upon the worst part of the bridge the covered part where there were top and bottom and sides of blazing wood the roar of the flame was so close to Ring that he could not hear the calls from either side of the river and he pushed desperately on and disappeared into the cover part there was dead silence except for the crackling of the fire not a man cried out all waited in hopeless expectancy and then came a mighty yell from Northerner and Southerner alike for Johnny came crawling out of the end of the covered way he had actually passed through that frightful place and his clothes were blazed and he toppled over and fell into the shallow water a few minutes later he was dragged out unconscious and hurried to a hospital he lingered for a day or two still unconscious and then came to himself and smiled a little and found that the sword for which he had given his life had been left beside him he took it in his arms he hugged it to his breast and gave a few words of the final message to me and that was all Cottonwell's voice had gone thrillingly low as he neared the end for it was also very very vivid to him and his eyes had grown tender and his lips more strong and firm and he fell silent thinking of that long ago happening and though he looked down upon the thronging traffic of broad street it was clear that he did not see it and that if the rumbling hubbub of sound meant anything to him it was the rumbling of the guns of the distant past when we spoke again it was with a still tensor tone of feeling when I stood besides the body of John Ring and realized that he had died for the love of me I made a vow that has formed my life I vowed that from that moment I would live not only my own life but I would also live the life of John Ring and from that moment I have worked sixteen hours every day eight for John Ring's work and eight for my own a curious note had come into his voice as one of who had run into the race near the goal fought the good fight and neared the end every morning when I rise I look at this sword or if I'm away from home I think of the sword and vow anew that another day she'll see sixteen hours of work from me and when one comes to know Russell Conwell one knows that never did a man work so hard and consistently it was though John Ring and his giving of his life through devotion to me that I became a Christian he went on this did not come about immediately but it came before the war was over and it came through the faithful Johnny Ring there was a little lonely cemetery in the Berkshires a tiny burying ground on a windswept hill a few miles from Conwell's old home in this isolated burying ground bushes and vines and grass growing for fusion and a few trees cast a gentle shade and the tree-clad hills go a billowing off for miles and miles in wild and lovely beauty and in that lovely little graveyard I found a plain stone that marks the resting place of John Ring end of part five