Russell H. Conwell, founder of the Institutional church in America : $b the work and the manBurr, Agnes Rush
Religion
Russell H. Conwell, founder of the Institutional church in America : $b the work and the man
Burr, Agnes Rush
Conwell, Russell H., 1843-1925; Minneapolis (Minn.) -- Biography
Then together they rushed to the garden and stirred up the white sands
with their fingers and found others more beautiful, more valuable
diamonds than the first, and thus, said the guide to me, were
discovered the diamond mines of Golconda, the most magnificent diamond
mines in all the history of mankind, exceeding the Kimberley in its
value. The great Kohinoor diamond in England's crown jewels and the
largest crown diamond on earth in Russia's crown jewels, which I had
often hoped she would have to sell before they had peace with Japan,
came from that mine, and when the old guide had called my attention to
that wonderful discovery he took his Turkish cap off his head again
and swung it around in the air to call my attention to the moral.
Those Arab guides have a moral to each story, though the stories are
not always moral. He said had Al Hafed remained at home and dug in his
own cellar or in his own garden, instead of wretchedness, starvation,
poverty and death in a strange land, he would have had "acres of
diamonds"--for every acre, yes, every shovelful of that old farm
afterwards revealed the gems which since have decorated the crowns of
monarchs. When he had given the moral to his story, I saw why he had
reserved this story for his "particular friends." I didn't tell him I
could see it; I was not going to tell that old Arab that I could see
it. For it was that mean old Arab's way of going around a thing, like
a lawyer, and saying indirectly what he did not dare say directly,
that there was a certain young man that day traveling down the Tigris
River that might better be at home in America. I didn't tell him I
could see it.
I told him his story reminded me of one, and I told it to him quick. I
told him about that man out in California, who, in 1847, owned a
ranch out there. He read that gold had been discovered in Southern
California, and he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter and started off to
hunt for gold. Colonel Sutter put a mill on the little stream in
that farm and one day his little girl brought some wet sand from the
raceway of the mill into the house and placed it before the fire to
dry, and as that sand was falling through the little girl's fingers
a visitor saw the first shining scales of real gold that were ever
discovered in California; and the man who wanted the gold had sold
this ranch and gone away, never to return. I delivered this lecture
two years ago in California, in the city that stands near that farm,
and they told me that the mine is not exhausted yet, and that a
one-third owner of that farm has been getting during these recent
years twenty dollars of gold every fifteen minutes of his life,
sleeping or waking. Why, you and I would enjoy an income like that!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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