Acres of Diamonds

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ACRES
OF DIAMONDS
BY
RUSSELL H. CONWELL
FOUNDER OF TEMPLE UNIVERSITY
PHILADELPHIA

_HIS LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS
BY
ROBERT SHACKLETON_

With an Autobiographical Note

ACRES OF DIAMONDS

CONTENTS

ACRES OF DIAMONDS
HIS LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS
I. THE STORY OF THE SWORD
II. THE BEGINNING AT OLD LEXINGTON
III. STORY OF THE FIFTY-SEVEN CENTS
IV. HIS POWER AS ORATOR AND PREACHER
V. GIFT FOR INSPIRING OTHERS
VI. MILLIONS OF HEARERS
VII. HOW A UNIVERSITY WAS FOUNDED
VIII. HIS SPLENDID EFFICIENCY
IX. THE STORY OF ``ACRES OF DIAMONDS''
FIFTY YEARS ON THE LECTURE PLATFORM

AN APPRECIATION

THOUGH Russell H. Conwell's Acres of Diamonds
have been spread all over the United States,
time and care have made them more valuable,
and now that they have been reset in black and
white by their discoverer, they are to be laid in the
hands of a multitude for their enrichment.

In the same case with these gems there is a
fascinating story of the Master Jeweler's life-work
which splendidly illustrates the ultimate unit of
power by showing what one man can do in one
day and what one life is worth to the world.

As his neighbor and intimate friend in
Philadelphia for thirty years, I am free to say that
Russell H. Conwell's tall, manly figure stands
out in the state of Pennsylvania as its first citizen
and ``The Big Brother'' of its seven millions of
people.

From the beginning of his career he has been a
credible witness in the Court of Public Works to
the truth of the strong language of the New
Testament Parable where it says, ``If ye have
faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto
this mountain, `Remove hence to yonder place,'
AND IT SHALL REMOVE AND NOTHING SHALL BE
IMPOSSIBLE UNTO YOU.

As a student, schoolmaster, lawyer, preacher,
organizer, thinker and writer, lecturer, educator,
diplomat, and leader of men, he has made his
mark on his city and state and the times in which
he has lived. A man dies, but his good work lives.

His ideas, ideals, and enthusiasms have inspired
tens of thousands of lives. A book full of the
energetics of a master workman is just what every
young man cares for.

1915.
{signature}

ACRES OF DIAMONDS

_Friends_.--This lecture has been delivered under these
circumstances: I visit a town or city, and try to arrive there
early
enough to see the postmaster, the barber, the keeper of the
hotel,
the principal of the schools, and the ministers of some of the
churches, and then go into some of the factories and stores, and
talk with the people, and get into sympathy with the local
conditions of that town or city and see what has been their
history,
what opportunities they had, and what they had failed to do--
and every town fails to do something--and then go to the lecture
and talk to those people about the subjects which applied to
their locality. ``Acres of Diamonds''--the idea--has
continuously
been precisely the same. The idea is that in this country
of ours every man has the opportunity to make more of himself
than he does in his own environment, with his own skill, with
his own energy, and with his own friends.
RUSSELL H. CONWELL.

ACRES OF DIAMONDS

[1]

This is the most recent and complete form of the lecture.
It happened to be delivered in Philadelphia, Dr. Conwell's
home city. When he says ``right here in Philadelphia,'' he means
the home city, town, or village of every reader of this book,
just
as he would use the name of it if delivering the lecture there,
instead of doing it through the pages which follow.

WHEN going down the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers many years ago with a party of
English travelers I found myself under the direction
of an old Arab guide whom we hired up at
Bagdad, and I have often thought how that guide
resembled our barbers in certain mental
characteristics. He thought that it was not only his
duty to guide us down those rivers, and do what he
was paid for doing, but also to entertain us with
stories curious and weird, ancient and modern,
strange and familiar. Many of them I have forgotten,
and I am glad I have, but there is one I
shall never forget.

The old guide was leading my camel by its
halter along the banks of those ancient rivers, and
he told me story after story until I grew weary
of his story-telling and ceased to listen. I have
never been irritated with that guide when he
lost his temper as I ceased listening. But I
remember that he took off his Turkish cap and
swung it in a circle to get my attention. I could
see it through the corner of my eye, but I determined
not to look straight at him for fear he would
tell another story. But although I am not a
woman, I did finally look, and as soon as I did he
went right into another story.

Said he, ``I will tell you a story now which I
reserve for my particular friends.'' When he
emphasized the words ``particular friends,'' I
listened, and I have ever been glad I did. I really
feel devoutly thankful, that there are 1,674 young
men who have been carried through college by
this lecture who are also glad that I did listen.
The old guide told me that there once lived not
far from the River Indus an ancient Persian by
the name of Ali Hafed. He said that Ali Hafed
owned a very large farm, that he had orchards,
grain-fields, and gardens; that he had money at
interest, and was a wealthy and contented man.
He was contented because he was wealthy, and
wealthy because he was contented. One day
there visited that old Persian farmer one of these
ancient Buddhist priests, one of the wise men of
the East. He sat down by the fire and told the
old farmer how this world of ours was made.
He said that this world was once a mere bank of
fog, and that the Almighty thrust His finger into
this bank of fog, and began slowly to move His
finger around, increasing the speed until at last
He whirled this bank of fog into a solid ball of
fire. Then it went rolling through the universe,
burning its way through other banks of fog, and
condensed the moisture without, until it fell in
floods of rain upon its hot surface, and cooled
the outward crust. Then the internal fires bursting
outward through the crust threw up the mountains
and hills, the valleys, the plains and prairies
of this wonderful world of ours. If this internal
molten mass came bursting out and cooled very
quickly it became granite; less quickly copper,
less quickly silver, less quickly gold, and, after
gold, diamonds were made.

Said the old priest, ``A diamond is a congealed
drop of sunlight.'' Now that is literally scientifically
true, that a diamond is an actual deposit
of carbon from the sun. The old priest told Ali
Hafed that if he had one diamond the size of
his thumb he could purchase the county, and if
he had a mine of diamonds he could place his
children upon thrones through the influence of
their great wealth.

Ali Hafed heard all about diamonds, how much
they were worth, and went to his bed that night
a poor man. He had not lost anything, but he
was poor because he was discontented, and
discontented because he feared he was poor. He
said, ``I want a mine of diamonds,'' and he lay
awake all night.

Early in the morning he sought out the priest.
I know by experience that a priest is very cross
when awakened early in the morning, and when
he shook that old priest out of his dreams, Ali
Hafed said to him:

``Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?''

``Diamonds! What do you want with diamonds?''
``Why, I wish to be immensely rich.''
``Well, then, go along and find them. That is
all you have to do; go and find them, and then
you have them.'' ``But I don't know where to
go.'' ``Well, if you will find a river that runs
through white sands, between high mountains,
in those white sands you will always find
diamonds.'' ``I don't believe there is any such
river.'' ``Oh yes, there are plenty of them. All
you have to do is to go and find them, and then
you have them.'' Said Ali Hafed, ``I will go.''

So he sold his farm, collected his money, left
his family in charge of a neighbor, and away he
went in search of diamonds. He began his search,
very properly to my mind, at the Mountains of
the Moon. Afterward he came around into Palestine,
then wandered on into Europe, and at last
when his money was all spent and he was in
rags, wretchedness, and poverty, he stood on the
shore of that bay at Barcelona, in Spain, when
a great tidal wave came rolling in between the
pillars of Hercules, and the poor, afflicted,
suffering, dying man could not resist the awful
temptation to cast himself into that incoming tide, and
he sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise
in this life again.

When that old guide had told me that awfully
sad story he stopped the camel I was riding on
and went back to fix the baggage that was coming
off another camel, and I had an opportunity to
muse over his story while he was gone. I remember
saying to myself, ``Why did he reserve that
story for his `particular friends'?'' There seemed
to be no beginning, no middle, no end, nothing
to it. That was the first story I had ever heard
told in my life, and would be the first one I ever
read, in which the hero was killed in the first
chapter. I had but one chapter of that story,
and the hero was dead.

When the guide came back and took up the
halter of my camel, he went right ahead with the
story, into the second chapter, just as though
there had been no break. The man who purchased
Ali Hafed's farm one day led his camel
into the garden to drink, and as that camel put
its nose into the shallow water of that garden
brook, Ali Hafed's successor noticed a curious
flash of light from the white sands of the stream.
He pulled out a black stone having an eye of light
reflecting all the hues of the rainbow. He took
the pebble into the house and put it on the mantel
which covers the central fires, and forgot all about
it.

A few days later this same old priest came in
to visit Ali Hafed's successor, and the moment
he opened that drawing-room door he saw that
flash of light on the mantel, and he rushed up
to it, and shouted: ``Here is a diamond! Has Ali
Hafed returned?'' ``Oh no, Ali Hafed has not
returned, and that is not a diamond. That is
nothing but a stone we found right out here in our
own garden.'' ``But,'' said the priest, ``I tell you
I know a diamond when I see it. I know positively
that is a diamond.''

Then together they rushed out into that old
garden and stirred up the white sands with their
fingers, and lo! there came up other more beautiful
and valuable gems than the first. ``Thus,''
said the guide to me, and, friends, it is historically
true, ``was discovered the diamond-mine of
Golconda, the most magnificent diamond-mine in
all the history of mankind, excelling the Kimberly
itself. The Kohinoor, and the Orloff of the crown
jewels of England and Russia, the largest on earth,
came from that mine.''

When that old Arab guide told me the second
chapter of his story, he then took off his Turkish
cap and swung it around in the air again to get
my attention to the moral. Those Arab guides
have morals to their stories, although they are
not always moral. As he swung his hat, he said
to me, ``Had Ali Hafed remained at home and dug
in his own cellar, or underneath his own wheat-
fields, or in his own garden, instead of wretchedness,
starvation, and death by suicide in a strange
land, he would have had `acres of diamonds.'
For every acre of that old farm, yes, every
shovelful, afterward revealed gems which since have
decorated the crowns of monarchs.''

When he had added the moral to his story I
saw why he reserved it for ``his particular friends.''
But I did not tell him I could see it. It was that
mean old Arab's way of going around a thing
like a lawyer, to say indirectly what he did not
dare say directly, that ``in his private opinion
there was a certain young man then traveling down
the Tigris River that might better be at home in
America.'' I did not tell him I could see that,
but I told him his story reminded me of one, and
I told it to him quick, and I think I will tell it to
you.

I told him of a man out in California in 1847
who owned a ranch. He heard they had discovered
gold in southern California, and so with a passion
for gold he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter, and
away he went, never to come back. Colonel
Sutter put a mill upon a stream that ran through
that ranch, and one day his little girl brought
some wet sand from the raceway into their home
and sifted it through her fingers before the fire,
and in that falling sand a visitor saw the first
shining scales of real gold that were ever discovered
in California. The man who had owned that
ranch wanted gold, and he could have secured it
for the mere taking. Indeed, thirty-eight millions
of dollars has been taken out of a very few acres
since then. About eight years ago I delivered
this lecture in a city that stands on that farm,
and they told me that a one-third owner for years
and years had been getting one hundred and
twenty dollars in gold every fifteen minutes,
sleeping or waking, without taxation. You and
I would enjoy an income like that--if we didn't
have to pay an income tax.

But a better illustration really than that
occurred here in our own Pennsylvania. If there
is anything I enjoy above another on the platform,
it is to get one of these German audiences
in Pennsylvania before me, and fire that at them,
and I enjoy it to-night. There was a man living
in Pennsylvania, not unlike some Pennsylvanians
you have seen, who owned a farm, and he did
with that farm just what I should do with a
farm if I owned one in Pennsylvania--he sold it.
But before he sold it he decided to secure employment
collecting coal-oil for his cousin, who was
in the business in Canada, where they first
discovered oil on this continent. They dipped it
from the running streams at that early time.
So this Pennsylvania farmer wrote to his cousin
asking for employment. You see, friends, this
farmer was not altogether a foolish man. No,
he was not. He did not leave his farm until he
had something else to do. _*Of all the simpletons
the stars shine on I don't know of a worse one than
the man who leaves one job before he has gotten
another_. That has especial reference to my
profession, and has no reference whatever to a man
seeking a divorce. When he wrote to his cousin
for employment, his cousin replied, ``I cannot
engage you because you know nothing about the
oil business.''

Well, then the old farmer said, ``I will know,''
and with most commendable zeal (characteristic
of the students of Temple University) he set
himself at the study of the whole subject. He
began away back at the second day of God's
creation when this world was covered thick and
deep with that rich vegetation which since has
turned to the primitive beds of coal. He studied
the subject until he found that the drainings really
of those rich beds of coal furnished the coal-oil
that was worth pumping, and then he found how
it came up with the living springs. He studied
until he knew what it looked like, smelled like,
tasted like, and how to refine it. Now said he
in his letter to his cousin, ``I understand the oil
business.'' His cousin answered, ``All right,
come on.''

So he sold his farm, according to the county
record, for $833 (even money, ``no cents''). He
had scarcely gone from that place before the man
who purchased the spot went out to arrange for
the watering of the cattle. He found the previous
owner had gone out years before and put a plank
across the brook back of the barn, edgewise into
the surface of the water just a few inches. The
purpose of that plank at that sharp angle across
the brook was to throw over to the other bank a
dreadful-looking scum through which the cattle
would not put their noses. But with that plank
there to throw it all over to one side, the cattle
would drink below, and thus that man who had
gone to Canada had been himself damming back
for twenty-three years a flood of coal-oil which the
state geologists of Pennsylvania declared to us
ten years later was even then worth a hundred
millions of dollars to our state, and four years ago
our geologist declared the discovery to be worth
to our state a thousand millions of dollars. The
man who owned that territory on which the city
of Titusville now stands, and those Pleasantville
valleys, had studied the subject from the second
day of God's creation clear down to the present
time. He studied it until he knew all about it,
and yet he is said to have sold the whole of it
for $833, and again I say, ``no sense.''

But I need another illustration. I found it in
Massachusetts, and I am sorry I did because that
is the state I came from. This young man in
Massachusetts furnishes just another phase of my
thought. He went to Yale College and studied
mines and mining, and became such an adept as
a mining engineer that he was employed by the
authorities of the university to train students who
were behind their classes. During his senior year
he earned $15 a week for doing that work. When
he graduated they raised his pay from $15 to $45
a week, and offered him a professorship, and as
soon as they did he went right home to his mother.

_*If they had raised that boy's pay from $15 to $15.60
he would have stayed and been proud of the place,
but when they put it up to $45 at one leap, he said,
``Mother, I won't work for $45 a week. The idea
of a man with a brain like mine working for $45
a week!_ Let's go out in California and stake out
gold-mines and silver-mines, and be immensely rich.''

Said his mother, ``Now, Charlie, it is just as
well to be happy as it is to be rich.''

``Yes,'' said Charlie, ``but it is just as well to
be rich and happy, too.'' And they were both
right about it. As he was an only son and
she a widow, of course he had his way. They
always do.

They sold out in Massachusetts, and instead
of going to California they went to Wisconsin,
where he went into the employ of the Superior
Copper Mining Company at $15 a week again,
but with the proviso in his contract that he should
have an interest in any mines he should discover
for the company. I don't believe he ever discovered
a mine, and if I am looking in the face of any
stockholder of that copper company you wish
he had discovered something or other. I have
friends who are not here because they could not
afford a ticket, who did have stock in that company
at the time this young man was employed
there. This young man went out there, and I
have not heard a word from him. I don't know
what became of him, and I don't know whether
he found any mines or not, but I don't believe
he ever did.

But I do know the other end of the line. He
had scarcely gotten out of the old homestead before
the succeeding owner went out to dig potatoes.
The potatoes were already growing in the ground
when he bought the farm, and as the old farmer
was bringing in a basket of potatoes it hugged
very tight between the ends of the stone fence.
You know in Massachusetts our farms are nearly
all stone wall. There you are obliged to be very
economical of front gateways in order to have
some place to put the stone. When that basket
hugged so tight he set it down on the ground,
and then dragged on one side, and pulled on the
other side, and as he was dragging that basket
through this farmer noticed in the upper and
outer corner of that stone wall, right next the
gate, a block of native silver eight inches square.
That professor of mines, mining, and mineralogy
who knew so much about the subject that he
would not work for $45 a week, when he sold
that homestead in Massachusetts sat right on
that silver to make the bargain. He was born
on that homestead, was brought up there, and
had gone back and forth rubbing the stone with
his sleeve until it reflected his countenance, and
seemed to say, ``Here is a hundred thousand
dollars right down here just for the taking.''
But he would not take it. It was in a home in
Newburyport, Massachusetts, and there was no
silver there, all away off--well, I don't know where,
and he did not, but somewhere else, and he was
a professor of mineralogy.

My friends, that mistake is very universally
made, and why should we even smile at him. I
often wonder what has become of him. I do not
know at all, but I will tell you what I ``guess''
as a Yankee. I guess that he sits out there by his
fireside to-night with his friends gathered around
him, and he is saying to them something like this:
``Do you know that man Conwell who lives in
Philadelphia?'' ``Oh yes, I have heard of him.''
``Do you know that man Jones that lives in
Philadelphia?'' ``Yes, I have heard of him, too.''

Then he begins to laugh, and shakes his sides
and says to his friends, ``Well, they have done
just the same thing I did, precisely''--and that
spoils the whole joke, for you and I have done
the same thing he did, and while we sit here and
laugh at him he has a better right to sit out there
and laugh at us. I know I have made the same
mistakes, but, of course, that does not make any
difference, because we don't expect the same man
to preach and practise, too.

As I come here to-night and look around this
audience 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 would that the
Academy had been filled to-night 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 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 the 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 your city if you think
there are any `acres of diamonds' here.''

I was greatly interested in that account in the
newspaper of the young man who found that
diamond in North Carolina. It 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 the
map of the geologic formations of our continent,
and traced it. He said it went either 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 the diamonds were there,
for they have been discovered and sold; and that
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.

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 to you. Because
now that the Queen of England has given the
greatest compliment ever conferred upon American
woman for her attire because she did not appear
with any jewels at all at the late reception in
England, it has 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 unto great wealth, is here
in Philadelphia now, within the reach of almost
every man and woman who hears me speak to-
night, and 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 sight 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 their 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 a poor man without capital have
such an opportunity to get rich quickly and
honestly as he has now in our city. I say it 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 in any such talk, but to say the
things I believe, and unless some of you get
richer for what I am saying to-night my time is
wasted.

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