This stirring manifesto shows how to discover everything you need to succeed— where you least expect it.So begins one of the most famous speeches of the twentieth century, a talk that educator and minister Russell H. Conwell delivered before literally thousands of audiences before his death in 1925. In its printed version Acres of Diamonds reached millions of readers around the world. Conwell's great manifesto imparts one extraordinary lesson: All the wealth you could ever dream of, search for, or yearn after—in whatever form you wish for—exists right beneath your own feet. It is a message of determination, unconventional thinking, and positive living that came to influence a generation of motivational literature.The Success Classics edition of Acres of Diamonds also features two rare bonus works: Praying for Money and The Story of "Acres of Diamonds" by journalist Robert Shackleton.
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.”
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