Acres of Diamonds (Russell H. Conwell) | Full Audiobook - Pigeon Audiobooks

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, dear listener. If you're here, it's probably because you're
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(00:25):
the world. Also, if you make your purchase through these links,
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which helps support us in continuing to upload more and
more audiobooks for free. Let's make the world a better
place through books together. Pigeon Publishing House presents Acres of

(00:48):
Diamonds author Russell H. Conwell. Preface. Acres of Diamonds was
originally a lecture which doctor Russell Kahman, while delivered in
over six thousand towns, villages, and cities. One of the
first examples of new thought literature, Acres of Diamonds is

(01:09):
often quoted today by mindset gurus. Tens of thousands of
people have been motivated and inspired by this little book.
Conwell's ideas ideals and enthusiasms teach us that we don't
need look elsewhere for opportunity, achievement, or fortune. The resources
to achieve all good things are present in our own community.

(01:30):
Anyone can create wealth if we try hard enough, and
our own acre of diamonds is well within our grasp.
Authors note, 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

(01:50):
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 when every town fails to do something.
And then go to the lecture and talk to those

(02:12):
people about the subjects which apply 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.

(02:35):
Conwell Bblographical note. This is the most recent and complete
form of the lecture. It happened to be delivered in Philadelphia,
doctor 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

(02:55):
name of it if delivering the lecture there, instead of
doing it through the pages which follow acres of diamonds
the lecture. 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 Baghdad, and I have often
thought how that guide resembled our barbers in certain mental characteristics.

(03:20):
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

(03:41):
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,

(04:03):
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,

(04:23):
I listened. And I have ever been glad I did.
I really feel devoutly thankful that there are one thousand,
six hundred and seventy four 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 Haft. He said

(04:44):
that Ali half 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 the 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

(05:08):
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

(05:28):
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

(05:49):
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 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 Half

(06:12):
that if he had won 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 Half 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,

(06:34):
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 Half said
to him, will you tell me where I can find diamonds?

(06:59):
Diamond 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,

(07:23):
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 Halft. I will go.
So he sold his farm, collected his money, left his
family in charge of a neighbor, and away he went

(07:45):
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, wretched 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

(08:07):
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

(08:29):
had an opportunity to muse over his story while he
was gone. I remember saying to myself, why did you
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

(08:51):
first chapter. I had but one chapter of that story,
and the hero was dead. When the guide came back
in 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 Hath's farm one day led his camel into
the garden to drink, And as that camel put its

(09:13):
nose into the shallow water of that garden brook, Oli
Hath'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 mantle that covers the central fires,
and forgot all about it. A few days later, the

(09:35):
same old priest came in to visit ali Hath's successor,
and the moment he opened the drawing room door, he
saw that flash of light on the mantle, and he
rushed up to it and shouted, here is a diamond.
Has ali Haft returned? Oh, no, ali Haft has not returned,
And that is not a diamond. That is nothing but
a stone we found right out here in our own garden.

(09:58):
But said the priest, I tell you, oh, 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

(10:19):
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 Cenar,
and the oorloff 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,

(10:41):
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 Haft remained at home
and dug in his own cellar, or underneath his own
wheat fields, or in his own garden, instead of wretchedness,

(11:02):
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

(11:22):
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

(11:42):
him quick, and I think I will tell it to you.
I told him of a man out in California in
eighteen forty seven 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,

(12:04):
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

(12:26):
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

(12:47):
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 fired it at them, and I
enjoy it. Tonight there was a man living in Pennsylvania,

(13:07):
not unlike some Pennsylvanians you have seen, who owned a farm,
and he did with that farm just what I should
do with the farm if I own 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

(13:29):
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.

(13:50):
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 because you know nothing about the oil business. Well,

(14:11):
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

(14:34):
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

(14:57):
his farm, according to the county record, for high hundred
and thirty three dollars even money, no sense. 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

(15:18):
just a few inches. The purpose of that planket 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

(15:40):
geologists of Pennsylvania declared to us ten years later, was
even then worth one hundred millions of dollars to our state,
and four years ago our geologist declared the discovery to
be worth to our state one thousand millions of dollars.
The man who owned that territory on which the city
of Titusville now stands and those Pleasantville Valley had studied

(16:00):
the subject from the second day of God's creation cleared
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. 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

(16:22):
I came from. This young man in Massachusetts furnishes just
another phase of my thought. He went to Yale College
and studied minds in 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 fifteen dollars

(16:43):
a week for doing that work. When he graduated, they
raised his pay from fifteen dollars to forty five dollars
a week and offered him a professorship, and as soon
as they did, he went right home to his mother Asterisk.
If they had raised the boys pay from fifteen dollars
to fifth eighteen dollars and sixty cents, he would have
stayed and been proud of the place. But when they

(17:04):
put it up to forty five dollars at 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 in California and stake out gold mines and
silver mines and be immensely rich, said his mother. Now, Charlie,

(17:25):
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.

(17:47):
Or he went into the employee 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 minds 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.

(18:09):
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.

(18:32):
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, when Massachusetts are farms are
nearly all stone wall. There, you are obliged to be

(18:55):
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 the 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

(19:20):
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

(19:40):
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 the way 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

(20:00):
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 is a Yankee. I guess that
he sits out there by his fireside tonight 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.

(20:21):
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.
M 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

(20:44):
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 practice too. As I
come here tonight 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

(21:05):
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 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

(21:27):
an audience, is 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

(21:48):
that account in the newspaper of the young man who
found a 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

(22:09):
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,

(22:31):
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 this 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 is that only comes from the most

(22:53):
profitable mines that are found on Earth. But it serves
simply to illustrate my thought, which I emphasized by saying,
if you do not have the actual diamond minds, 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.

(23:14):
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 wished 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

(23:35):
man and woman who hears me speak tonight. 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 side
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

(23:57):
difficult perhaps to buy a ticket to this lecture or
death othering tonight, 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 today,
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 is now in our city.

(24:19):
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 tonight, my time is wasted. I say that
you ought to get rich, and it is your duty

(24:39):
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

(25:01):
make money honestly is to preach the gospel. That is
the reason the men who get rich may be the
most honest men you 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,

(25:21):
that is the reason why you have none. Because you
have that idea of people, the foundation of your faith
is altogether false. Let me say here clearly, and say
it briefly, though 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.

(25:45):
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 so rare a thing, in fact, that the newspapers
talk about them all the time as a matter of news.

(26:08):
Until you get the idea that all the other rich
men got rich dishonestly. My friend, you take and drive me,
if you furnish the autaw, out into the suburbs of Philadelphia,
and introduce me to the people who own their homes
around this great city, those beautiful homes with gardens and flowers,
those magnificent homes so lovely in their art. And I
will introduce you to the very best people in character

(26:29):
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 not an inconsistent thing. We preach against covetousness, and

(26:52):
you know we do in the pulpit, and oftentimes preach
against it so long and use the terms about filthy
lucres 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. Oh, the inconsistency of

(27:13):
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 could
without it. Money printed your Bible, money builds your churches,
money sends your missionaries, and money pays your preachers. And
you would not have many of them either if you

(27:33):
did not pay them. I am always willing that my
church should raise my salary. Because the church that pays
the largest salary always raises it the easiest. You never
knew an exception to it 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

(27:54):
he can, if his spirit be right to use it
for what it is given to him. I say, then
you ought to have money. If you can honestly attain
unto riches in Philadelphia, it is your Christian and godly
duty to do so. It is an awful mistake of
these pious people to think you must be awfully poor
in order to be pious. Some men say, don't you

(28:16):
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 is very small. To sympathize with a man whom
God has punished for his sins, thus to help him
when God would still continue with just punishment is to

(28:38):
do wrong, no doubt about it. And we do that
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 by the shortcomings of someone else.
It is all wrong to be poor anyhow. Let us

(29:00):
give in to that argument and pass that to one side.
A gentleman gets up back there 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

(29:20):
that has left me standing alone, that there are some
things in this world that are higher and sweeter and
purer than money. Well do I 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

(29:43):
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 he was one
of God's poor. Well, I wonder what his wife thinks
about that. She earns all all the money that comes
into that house, and he smokes a part of that

(30:03):
on the Verandah. I don't want to see any more
of the Lord's poor of that kind, and I don't
believe the Lord does. And yet there are 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 prejudiced against

(30:27):
advising a Christian man, or as a Jew would say,
a godly man, from attaining underwealth. The prejudice is so universal,
and the years are far enough back I think for
me to safely mention that years ago, up at Temple University,
there was a young man in our theological school who
thought he was the only pious student in that department.

(30:47):
He came into my office one evening and sat down
by my desk and said to me, mister 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 it. The Academy at the Pierce 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

(31:09):
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 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 into the chapel and
get the Bible and show me the place. So out

(31:32):
he went for the Bible, and soon he stalked into
my office with the Bible open, with all the bigoted
pride of the 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, mister President. You can read it for yourself.
I said to him, well, young man, you will learn

(31:54):
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 the theological school. However,
that emphasis is exegesus. Now, will you take that Bible
and read it yourself and give the proper emphasis to it.

(32:15):
He took the Bible and probably read the love of
money is the root of all evil. Then he had
it right. And when one does quote a right from
that same old book, he quotes the absolute truth. I
have lived through fifty years of the mightiest battle that
old book has ever fought, and I have lived to
see its banners flying free. For never in the history

(32:35):
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 fall into many snares. No doubt about that.

(32:57):
The love of money, what is that? It is? Making
an idol of money, an idolatry pure and simple everywhere,
is condemned by the Holy scriptures and by man's common sense.
The man that worships the dollar, instead of thinking of
the purposes for which it ought to be used. The
man who idolizes simply money, the miser that hoards his

(33:17):
money in the cellar, or hides it in his stocking,
or refuses to invest it where it will do the
world good. That man who hugs the dollar until the
eagle squeals, has in him the root of all evil.
I think I will leave that behind me now and
answer the question of nearly all of you who are asking,
is there opportunity to get rich in Philadelphia? Well, now,

(33:38):
how simple a thing it is to see where it is,
And the instant you see where it is, it is yours.
Some old gentleman gets up back there and says, mister conwell,
have you lived in Philadelphia for thirty one years and
don't know that the time has gone by when you
can make anything in this city? No, I don't think
it is. Yes, it is, I have tried it. What

(33:59):
business are you in? I kept a store here for
twenty years and never made over one thousand dollars in
the whole twenty years. Well, then you can measure the
good you have been to the city by what this
city has paid you. Because a man can judge very
well what he is worth by what he receives, that is,
in what he is to the world at this time.

(34:20):
If you have not made over one thousand dollars in
twenty years in Philadelphia, it would have been better for
Philadelphia if they had kicked you out of the city
nineteen years and nine months ago. A man has no
right to keep a store in Philadelphia twenty years and
not make at least five hundred thousand dollars, even though
it be a corner grocery uptown. You say you cannot

(34:41):
make five thousand dollars 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 within the sound of your voice. Someone

(35:02):
says you don't know anything about business. A preacher never
knows a thing about business. Well, then I will have
to prove that 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

(35:24):
gets all sorts of experience in every kind of morecantile transactions,
it is in 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, that was not very often, but this
did occur many times. Friends. A man would come in
the store and say to me, do you keep jack knives? No,

(35:47):
we don't keep jack knives. And I went off whistling
a tune. What did I care about that man? Anyhow?
Then another farmer would come in and say, do you
keep jack knives? No, we don't keep jack knives. Then
I went away and whistled another tune. Then a third
man came right in the same door and said, do

(36:08):
you keep jack knives? No? Why is everyone around here
asking for jack knives? Do you suppose we are keeping
this store to supply the whole neighborhood with jack knives?
Do you carry on your store like that? In Philadelphia?
The difficulty was I had not then learned that the
foundation of godliness and the foundation principle of success in

(36:31):
business are both the same. Precisely the man who says
I cannot carry my religion into business 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

(36:54):
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 a reward myself, which it would have
been my duty to take. There are some overpious Christian
people who think if you take any profit on anything

(37:15):
you sell, that 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 that is not true to his own wife.

(37:35):
You cannot trust a man in the world that 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 it to him and actually profited myself.
I have no more right to sell goods without making
a profit on them than I have to overcharge him

(37:56):
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 I make. 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

(38:16):
until you have reached my years before you begin to
enjoy anything of 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 that it does me now in
this almost sacred presence tonight. Oh yes, I am paid
over and over a hundredfold tonight for dividing as I
have tried to do in some measure as I went

(38:38):
along through the years. I ought not speak that way.
It sounds egotistic, but I am old enough now to
be excused for that. I should have helped my fellow men,
which I have tried to do, and everyone should try
to do and get the happiness of it. The man
who goes home with the sense that he has stolen
a dollar that day, that he has robbed a man

(38:59):
of what was his honesty, 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 men, making and demanding
his own rights and his own profits, and giving to

(39:21):
every other man his rights and profits, lives every day.
And not only that, but it is 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 his store
in Philadelphia has been carrying on his store on the
wrong principle. Suppose I go into your store tomorrow morning

(39:43):
and ask, do you know neighbo Ay who lives one
square away at house number twelve forty? 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

(40:04):
he go to. I don't know and don't care. What
are you asking all these questions for. If you 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

(40:24):
don't know where your neighbor came 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 you go through the world saying no
opportunity to get rich, and there is the fault right

(40:45):
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, if traded applies to every occupation,
why can't you go into the morcantile business because I
haven't any capital. Oh, the weak and dudish creature that
can't see over its collar. It makes a person weak

(41:07):
to see these little dudes standing around 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. If 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

(41:29):
a young man or woman gets more money than he
or she has grown to buy practical experience, that 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

(41:49):
of friends, if you leave them an honorable name, it
is far better than that they should have money. It
would be worse for them, worse for the nation, that
they should have any 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

(42:12):
no class of people to be pitted 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 our 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

(42:33):
a home of his own. Then with that same love
comes also the divine inspiration toward better things, and he
begins to have his 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 in
the suburbs to look for a home. He goes to
the savings bank, perhaps for half of the value, and

(42:55):
then goes for his wife. And when he takes his
bride over the threshold of that door for the first time,
he says, in words of eloquence, my voice can never
touch I have earned this home myself. It is all mine,
and I divide with thea That is the grandest moment
a human heart may ever know. But a rich man's
son can never know that. He takes his bride into

(43:17):
a finer mansion, it may be, but he is 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 she 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.

(43:39):
I pity the rich man's sons unless they have the
good sense of the elder Vanderbilt, 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

(44:01):
boat that's Saturday night. He could not get one there,
but he did get a place for three dollars a week.
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 a university education to any man.
He would then be able to take care of the
millions of his father. But as a rule, the rich

(44:23):
men will not let their sons do the very thing
that made them great. As a rule, the rich man
will not allow his son to work. And his mother,
why she would think it was a social disgrace of her,
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

(44:46):
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 Fi Philadelphia. There sat beside
me a kind hearted young man, and he said, mister conwell,
you have been sick for two or three years. When

(45:08):
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 to mention
the incident in this way, but I follow the facts.
I got onto the seat with the driver of that
limousine outside, and when we were going up, I asked
the driver how much did this limousine cost? Six thousand,

(45:28):
eight hundred, 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 a corner lamp post out into the street again.

(45:50):
And when he got out into the street he laughed
till the whole machine trembled. He said, hy 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

(46:10):
the desk of the clerk, there stood a millionaire's son
from New York. He was an indescribable specimen of anthropologic potency.
He had a skull cap 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 is a very
difficult thing to describe that young man. He wore an

(46:33):
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. Dress like a grasshopper. This
human cricket came up to the clerk's desk just as
I entered. Adjusted his unseeing eyeglass and spake in this
wise to the clerk. You see, he thought it was hinglish,
you know, to lisp thir, will you have the kindness

(46:57):
to supply me with tomy poppa and Inweluf's. The hotel
clerk measured that man quick and he pulled the envelopes
in paper out of a drawer, threw them across the
counter toward the young man, and then turned away to
his books. You should have seen that young man when
those envelopes came across that counter. He swelled up like
a gobbler turkey, adjusted his unseeing eyeglass and yelled, come

(47:20):
right back here now, thir, will you order a thervin
to take that papa and in wellofs to yonder death. 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 do it. I have no
pity for such travesties upon human nature. If you have

(47:44):
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 you. All off t Stuart, a poor
boy in Knew York, had one dollar and fifty cents
to begin life on. He lost eighty seven cents of

(48:06):
that on the 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 came he to lose eighty seven cents? You probably
all know the story. How he lost it because he
bought some needles, threads, and buttons to sell, which people

(48:28):
did not want, and had them left 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 out what they wanted,
he invested his sixty three cents to supply a known demand.
Study it wherever you choose in business, in your profession,

(48:50):
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, need, and then
invest yourself where you are 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

(49:11):
in which mister Wannamaker carries on his great work in
New York. His fortune is 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 salesman learn it? When will you manufacturers
learn that? You must know the changing needs of humanity?

(49:31):
If you would succeed in life, apply yourselves, all you
Christian people, as manufacturers or merchants or workmen, to supply
that human need. It is a great principle, as broad
as humanity, and as deep as the Scripture itself. The
best illustration I ever heard was of John Jacob Aster.

(49:52):
You know that he made the money of the Astor
family 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. Some young man here tonight
will say, while they could make those fortunes over in
New York, but they could not do it in Philadelphia.

(50:14):
My friends, did you ever read that wonderful book of Reeese?
His memory is sweet to us because of his recent death,
wherein is given his statistical account of the records taken
in eighteen eighty nine of one hundred and seven millionaires
of New York. If you read the account, you will
see that out of the one hundred and seven millionaires,
only seven made their money in New York. Out of

(50:36):
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 man in this country today, if you read
the real estate values, has never moved away from a
town of three thousand, five hundred inhabitants. It makes not

(50:56):
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 Jacobaster 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

(51:18):
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 the park in

(51:39):
the shade. What was John Jacobaster doing out there, and
in partnership with people who had failed on his own hands?
He had the most important end, to my mind, the
most pleasant part of that partnership on his hands. For
as John Jacobaster sat on that bench, he was watching
the ladies as they went by. And where is the

(52:00):
man who would not get rich at 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 gaze on her, then he studied
her bonnet, and by the time it was out of sight,
he knew the shape of the frame, the color of
the trimmings, and the crinklings in the feather. I sometimes

(52:21):
try to describe a bonnet, but not always. I would
not try to describe a modern bonnet. Where is the
man that could describe one? This aggregation of all sorts
of driftwood stuck on the back of the head or
the side of the neck, like a rooster with only
one tail feather left. But in John Jacob Astor's day,

(52:42):
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

(53:04):
color of bonnet. Now said he put such a bonnet
as that in the show window. He did not fill
his show window uptown with a lot of hats and
bonnets to drive people away, and then sit on the
backstairs and ball because people went to Wanamakers to trade.
He did not have a hat or a bonnet in
that show window. But what some lady liked before it
was made up. The tide of custom began immediately to

(53:27):
turn in, and that has been the foundation of the
greatest store in New York in that line, and still
exists as one of three stores. Its fortune was made
by John Jacob Aster after they had failed in business,
not by giving them any more money, but by finding
out what the ladies liked for bonnets before they wasted
any material in making them up. I tell you, if

(53:48):
a man could foresee the millinery business, he could foresee
anything under heaven. Suppose I were to go through this
audience tonight and ask you, in this great manufacturing city
if there are not opportunity unities to get rich in manufacturing. Oh, yes,
some young man says, there are opportunities here still if
you build with some trust, and if you have two

(54:08):
or three millions of dollars to begin with this capital.
Young man, the history of the breaking up of the
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 get rich so quickly manufacturing without capital as
you can now. But you will say you cannot do

(54:30):
anything of the kind. You cannot start without capital, young man,
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. You have gotten more knowledge of a fortune

(54:51):
than any amount of capital can give you. There was
a poor man out of work living in Hingham, Massachusetts.
He launched a 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 into a wooden chain. His

(55:13):
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 seldom you could make money at
that though, 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

(55:34):
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,

(55:54):
a doll's washstand, a doll's carriage, a little doll's umbrella,
and went on with a list of things the would
take him 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 hingham toys that were for so many years known
all over the world. That man began to make those

(56:16):
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 mister Lawson, in his frenzied finance says
that man is the richest man in old Massachusetts. And
I think it is the truth, and that man is
worth a hundred millions of dollars today and has been

(56:38):
only thirty four years. Making it on that one principle
that one must judge that what his own children like
at home, other people's children would like in their homes too.
To judge the human heart by oneself, by one's wife,
or by one's children. It is the royal road to
success in manufacturing. Oh but you say, didn't he have
any capital. Yes, a penknife, but I don't know that

(57:02):
he had paid for that. I spoke thus to an
audience in New Britain, Connecticut, and a lady four seats
back went home and tried to take off her collar,
and the collar button stuck in the button hole. She
threw it out and said, I am going to get
up something better than that to put on collars. Her
husband said, after what Conwell said tonight, you see there

(57:22):
is a need of 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 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

(57:44):
ever really done? Notwithstanding the greatness and the handsomeness of
your compliment to night, I do not believe there is
one intent of you that is going to make a
million of dollars because you are here tonight. But it
is not my fault, it is yours. I say that sorely.
What is the use of my talking? If people never
do what I advise them to do. When her husband

(58:07):
ridiculed her, she made up her mind she would make
a better collar button. And when a woman makes up
her mind, she will and does not say anything about it.
She does it. It was that New England woman who
invented the snap button that 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

(58:29):
modern waterproofs know the button that 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 was taken into partnership with great factories. Now
that woman goes over the sea every summer in her

(58:51):
private steamship Yess, and takes her husband with her. If
her husband were to die, she would have money enough
left now to buy a foreign duke or counter some
such title as that at the latest quotations. Now, what
is my 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 too near

(59:13):
to 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. Well, that newspaper ought to begin again.
Of course, I do not refer to gossip. I refer
to machines, and if I did, I might better include

(59:33):
the men. That newspaper could never appear if women had
not invented something. Friends, think, ye women think? You say
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 will. But follow this almost infallible direction when

(59:57):
you say a woman doesn't invent anything, I ask who
invented the Jackard loom that wove every stitch you wear,
missus Jackyard. 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. Missus General Greene

(01:00:19):
invented the cotton gin and showed the idea to mister 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 Howe.
He was in the Civil War with me, and often
in my tent, and I often heard him say that
he worked fourteen years to get up that sewing machine.

(01:00:42):
But his wife made up her mind one day that
they would starve to death if there wasn't something or
other invented pretty soon, and so in two hours she
invented the sewing machine. Of course, he took out the
patent in his name. Men always do that. Who was
it that invented the more and the reaper? According to

(01:01:02):
mister McCormick's confidential Communication 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 that when she
pulled the wire one way, it closed them, and when

(01:01:23):
she pulled the wire the other way, it opened them.
And there she had the principle of the mowing machine.
If you look at a mowing machine, you will see
it as nothing but a lot of shears. If a
woman can invent a mowing machine, if a woman can
invent a jack card loom, if a woman can invent
a cotton gin. If a woman can invent a trolley
switch as she did and made the trolleys possible. If

(01:01:44):
a woman can invent, as mister Carnegie said, the great
iron squeezers that laid the foundation of all the steel
millions of 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

(01:02:09):
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. The really great man is

(01:02:29):
a plane, straightforward, every day common sense man. You would
not dream that he was a great inventor if you
did not see something he had actually done. His neighbors
do not regard him 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

(01:02:52):
somewhere else. Their greatness is ever so simple, so plain,
so earnest, so practical, that the neighbors and friends never
recognize it. True 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,

(01:03:14):
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

(01:03:35):
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.

(01:03:56):
I went into the waiting room and sat down with
a lot of others on the bench, 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 and motioned
for me. I went up to that ante room, and
the secretary said, that is the President's door right over there.

(01:04:18):
Just rap 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 another door to 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 had been

(01:04:39):
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. I have
no faith in a man who doesn't know enough to
be afraid when he is being shot at. I never
was so afraid when the sh the shells came around

(01:05:00):
us at Antietam, as I was when I went into
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 men 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.

(01:05:23):
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.

(01:05:47):
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 that
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

(01:06:08):
and looked over to me, and a smile came over
his worn face. He said, I am a very busy
man and have only a few minutes to spare. Now
tell me, in the fewest words, what it is you 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. Mister Stanton was

(01:06:28):
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 in order to shoot a
boy under twenty years of age, and never will. You
can say that to his mother anyhow. 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.

(01:06:53):
We are going to win out now. We are 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 twenty five cents a day. Tad has a mule

(01:07:14):
team and we are 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

(01:07:35):
to the grass between the rocks. He was so familiar,
so every day, so farmer like that I felt 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 had gotten out,
I could not realize I had seen the President of
the United States at all. But a few days later,

(01:07:58):
when still in the city, I he 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 onto
ultimate liberty. Yet he was only old abe to his neighbors.

(01:08:21):
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 tunes stood
Lincoln's old neighbors, to whom he was just old abe.
Of course, that is 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

(01:08:44):
is great? He is 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,

(01:09:05):
not a great inventor or genius, invented the pin that
now is 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
thirty eight, and he could earn but little money. He
was employed in the office to rub out the marks

(01:09:26):
on the bills made by pencil memorandums, and he used
a rubber until his hand grew tired. He then tied
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

(01:09:47):
there was a patent. And that was the first thought
of that. He went to Boston and apply for his patent.
And every one of you that has a rubber tipped
pencil in your pocket is now paying tribute to the
millionaire capital. Not a penny did he invest in it.
All was income, all the way up into the millions.

(01:10:11):
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 Saint Petersburg, or London,
or Manayunk, or anywhere else, but here in our town.
I have come now to the apex of my thought.

(01:10:34):
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 and its greater wealth. Why does New
York excel Philadelphia, people say because of her harbor. Why
do many other cities of the United States get ahead
of Philadelphia? Now there is only one answer, and that

(01:10:55):
is because our own people talk down their own city.
If there ever was as a community on earth that
has to be forced to head, it is the city
of Philadelphia. If we are to have a boulevard, talk
it down, If we are going to a better schools,
talk them down, If you wish to have wise legislation,
talk it down, talk all the proposed improvements down. That

(01:11:17):
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 is 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, Saint Louis and San Francisco do. Oh, if
we only could get that spirit out among our people,

(01:11:40):
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 is worth living for on earth, there
was never an opportunity. Grater, let us talk up our

(01:12:01):
own city. But there are two other young men here
to night, and that is all I will venture to say,
because it is too late. One over there gets up
and says, there is going to be a great man
in Philadelphia, But never was one. Oh is that? So?
When are you going to be great? When I am
elected to some political office? Young man? Won't you learn

(01:12:24):
a lesson in the primer of politics that it is
a prima facie evidence of littlest 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

(01:12:45):
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. Other 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

(01:13:05):
next ten years. I know of a great many young
women now that woman's suffrage is coming, who say I
am going to be president of the United States someday.
I believe in woman's suffrage, and there is no doubt
but what it is coming, and I am getting out
of the way anyhow. I may want an office by
and by myself, but if the ambition for an office

(01:13:25):
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 is worthwhile. Unless
you can control more than one vote, you will be unknown,
and your influence so dissipated, is practically not to be felt.
This country is not run by votes, do you think

(01:13:48):
it is. It is governed by influence. It is governed
by the ambitions and the enterprises that control votes. The
young woman that thinks she is going to vot 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

(01:14:09):
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

(01:14:29):
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 are
going to be made great by an office, But remember
that if you are not great before you get the office,

(01:14:49):
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. I'll wh west.
They don't believe this, because they said Philadelphia would not
have heard of any Spanish war until fifty years. Hence,
some of you saw the procession go up Broad Street.

(01:15:10):
I was away, But the family wrote to me that
the tally Hell coach with Lieutenant Hobson upon it, stopped
right at the front door, and the people shouted Hurrah
for Hobson. And if I had been there, I would
have yelled too, because he deserves much more of his
country than he has 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

(01:15:32):
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 the 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 can name the other seven men.

(01:15:54):
We ought not to so teach history. We ought to
teach that, however humble a man's 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
as 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

(01:16:18):
I went down to see General Robert E. Lee, that
magnificent Christian gentlemen 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

(01:16:40):
you not killed. Rastus winked at him and said, cause
when there is any fightin goin 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
this has been printed in it for twenty five years.

(01:17:00):
I shut my eyes, shut them close, and low. I
see the faces of my youth. Yes, they sometimes say
to me, your hair is not white. You are working
night and day without seeming ever to stop. You can't
be old. But when I shut my eyes like any
other man in my ears, oh, then come trooping back
the faces of the loved and lost of long ago.
And I know, whatever men may say, it is evening time.

(01:17:24):
I shut my eyes now and look back to my
native town in Massachusetts, and I see the cattle showground
on the mountain top. I can see the horse sheds there.
I can see the congregational church, see the town hall
and mountaineers cottages. See a great assembly of people turning
out dressed resplendently, and I can see flags flying in
handkerchiefs waving, and hear bands playing. I can see the

(01:17:46):
company of soldiers that had re enlisted marching up on
that cattle showground. I was but a boy, but I
was captain of that company, and puffed out with pride.
A cambric needle would have burst me all to peace.
Then I thought it was the greatest event that ever
came to man on earth. If you have ever thought

(01:18:06):
you would like to be a king or queen, you
go and be received by the mayor. The bands played,
and all the people turned out to receive us. I
marched up that 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

(01:18:28):
of people, a hundred 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

(01:18:49):
giving them offense. He was a good man, but he
thought an office made a man great. He came up
and 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

(01:19:11):
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 in 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

(01:19:33):
had got seated, the chairman of the Selecman arose 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 that ran over the audience when they discovered that
the old fellow was going to deliver that speech himself.

(01:19:56):
He had never made a speech in his life, but
he fell into the same error that that hundreds of
other men have fallen into. It seems so strange that
a man won't learn he must speak his piece as
a boy if he intends to be an orator when
he is grown. But he seems to think all he
has to do is to hold an office to be
a great orator. So he came up to the front

(01:20:16):
and brought with him a speech that he had learned
by heart, walking up and down the pasture, or he
had frightened the cattle. He brought the manuscript with him
and 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 that platform, and then came forward like this tramp,
tramp tramp. He must have studied the subject a great deal,

(01:20:41):
when you come to think of it, because he assumed
an elocutionary attitude. He rested heavily upon his left heel
threw back his shoulders slightly advanced the right foot, opened
the organs of speech, and advanced his right foot at
an angle of forty five as he stood in that
elocutionary attitude. Friends, this is just the way that speech went.

(01:21:03):
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's fingers
began to go like that, his knees began to shake,
and then he trembled all over. He choked and swallowed

(01:21:24):
and came around to the table to look at the manuscript.
Then he gathered himself up with clenched fists and came back.
Fellow citizens, we are, fellow citizens. We are we are,
we are, we are, we are. 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

(01:21:45):
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 meant me, This young
hero who in imagination. Friends, remember, he said that if
he had he 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

(01:22:07):
have seen leading leading, We have seen leading his troops
on to the deadly breach. We have seen his shining.
We have seen his shining, his shining, his shining sword flashing,
flashing in the sunlight as he shouted to his troops.
Come on, oh, dear, dear, dear, How little that good

(01:22:27):
man knew about war. If he had known anything about
war at all, he ought to have known. What any
of my gee, our 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,

(01:22:48):
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 rode down the line
when our men were suddenly called to the line of battle,

(01:23:10):
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 hier the officers rank, 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,

(01:23:32):
I with my shining sword. In that house there sat
the company of my soldiers who had carried 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.

(01:23:53):
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, and 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,

(01:24:18):
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.

(01:24:40):
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 here. If you never hear
me again, remember this that if you wish to be
great at all, you must begin where you are, in
what you are in Philadelphia. Now, he that can give

(01:25:02):
to a 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.
But he who cannot be a blessing where he now
lives will never be great anywhere on the face of

(01:25:23):
God's earth. We live in deeds, not years, in feeling,
not in figures on a dial, in thoughts not breaths.
We should count time by heart throbs. In the cause
of right. Bailey says he most lives who thinks most.
If you forget everything I have said to you, do
not forget this, because it contains more in two lines

(01:25:44):
than all I have said. Bailey says he most lives
who thinks most, who feels the noblest, and who acts
the best. Thank you for listening to this audiobook. We
hope you've enjoyed it. Six

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Acres of Diamonds (Russell H. Conwell) | Full Audiobook