The
all-time classic
ACRES OF
DIAMONDS
Dr. Russell Conwell
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normal type when printed. ACRES OF DIAMONDS 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 The old guide was
leading my camel by its halter along the banks of those ancient rivers, and he
told me story after story until I grew weary of his story-telling and ceased to
listen. I have never been irritated with that guide when he lost his temper as
I ceased listening. But I remember that he took off his Turkish cap and swung
it in a circle to get my attention. I could see it through the corner of my
eye, but I determined not to look straight at him for fear he would tell
another story. But although I am not a woman, I did finally look, and as soon
as I did he went right into another story. Said he, “I will tell you a story
now which I reserve for my particular friends.” When he emphasized the words
“particular friends,” I listened and I have ever been glad I did. I really feel
devoutly thankful, that there are 1,674 young men who have been carried through
college by this lecture who are also glad that I did listen. The old guide told
me that there once lived not far from the River Indus an ancient Persian by the
name of Ali Hafed. He said that Ali Hafed owned a very large farm; that he had
orchards, grain-fields, and gardens; that he had money at interest and was a
wealthy and contented man. One day there visited that old Persian farmer one of
those ancient Buddhist priests, one of the wise men of the East. He sat down by
the fire and told the old farmer how this old world of ours was made. He said that this
world was once a mere bank of fog, and that the Almighty thrust His finger into
this bank of fog, and began slowly to move His finger around, increasing the
speed until at last He whirled this bank of fog into a solid ball of fire. Then
it went rolling through the universe, burning its way through other banks of
fog, and condensed the moisture without, until it fell in floods of rain upon
its hot surface, and cooled the outward crust. Then the internal fires bursting
outward through the crust threw up the mountains and hills, the valleys, the
plains and prairies of this wonderful world of ours. If this internal molten
mass came bursting out and cooled very quickly, it became granite; less quickly
copper, less quickly silver, less quickly gold, and, after gold, diamonds were
made. Said the old priest, “A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight.” Now
that is literally scientifically true, that a diamond is an actual deposit of
carbon from the sun. The old priest
told Ali Hafed that if he had one diamond the size of his thumb he could
purchase the county, and if the had a mine of diamonds he could place his
children upon thrones through the influence of their great wealth. Ali Hafed
heard all about diamonds, how much they were worth, and went to his bed that
night a poor man. He had not lost anything, but he was poor because he was
discontented, and discontented because he feared he was poor. He said, “I want
a mine of diamonds,” and he lay awake all night. Early in the morning he sought
out the priest. I know by experience that a priest is very cross when awakened
early in the morning, and when he shook that old priest out of his dreams, Ali
Hafed said to him: "Will you
tell me where I find diamonds?” "Diamonds!
What do you want with diamonds?” “Why, I wish to be
immensely rich.” “Well, then, go
along and find them. That is all you have to do; go and find them, and then you
have them.” “But I don’t know
where to go.” “Well, if you will
find a river that runs through white sands, between high mountains, in those
white sands you will always find diamonds.” “I don’t believe
there is any such river.” “Oh yes, there are
plenty of them. All you have to do is to go and find them, and then you have
them.” Said Ali Hafed, “I
will go.” So he sold his
farm, collected his money, left his family in charge of a neighbor, and away he
went in search of diamonds. He began his search, very properly to my mind, at
the Mountains of the Moon. Afterward he came around into Palestine, then
wandered on into Europe, and at last when his money was all spent and he was in
rags, wretchedness, and poverty, he stood on the shore of that bay at
Barcelona, in Spain, when a great tidal wave came rolling in between the
pillars of Hercules, and the poor, afflicted, suffering, dying man could not
resist the awful temptation to cast himself into that incoming tide, and he
sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise in this life again. Then after that
old guide had told me that awfully sad story, he stopped the camel I was riding
on and went back to fix the baggage that was coming off another camel, and I
had an opportunity to muse over his story while he was gone. I remember saying
to myself, “Why did he reserve that story for his ‘particular friends’?” There
seemed to be no beginning, no middle, no end, nothing to it. That was the first
story I had ever heard told in my life, and would be the first one I ever read,
in which the hero was killed in the first chapter. I had but one chapter of
that story, and the hero was dead. When the guide came back and took up the
halter of my camel, he went right ahead with the story, into the second
chapter, just as though there had been no break. The man who
purchased Ali Hafed’s farm one day led his camel into the garden to drink, and
as that camel put its nose into the shallow water of that garden brook, Ali
Hafed’s successor noticed a curious flash of light from the white sands of the
stream. He pulled out a black stone having an eye of light reflecting all the
hues of the rainbow. He took the pebble into the house and put it on the mantel
which covers the central fires, and forgot all about it. A few days later
this same old priest came in to visit Ali Hafed’s successor, and the moment he
opened that drawing-room door he saw that flash of light on the mantel, and he
rushed up to it, and shouted: “Here is a
diamond! Has Ali Hafed returned?” “Oh no, Ali Hafed
has not returned, and that is not a diamond. That is nothing but a stone we
found right out here in our own garden.” “But,” said the
priest, “I tell you I know a diamond when I see it. I know positively that is a
diamond.” Then together they
rushed out into that old garden and stirred up the white sands with their
fingers, and lo! There came up other more beautiful and valuable gems then the
first. “Thus,” said the guide to me, “was discovered the diamond-mine of
When that old Arab
guide told me the second chapter of his story, he then took off his Turkish cap
and swung it around in the air again to get my attention to the moral. Those
Arab guides have morals to their stories, although they are not always moral.
As he swung his hat, he said to me, “Had Ali Hafed remained at home and dug in
his own cellar, or underneath his own wheat fields or in his own garden,
instead of wretchedness, starvation, and death by suicide in a strange land, he
would have had ‘acres of diamonds.’ For every acre of that old farm, yes, every
shovelful, afterward revealed gems which since have decorated the crowns of
monarchs.” When he had added
the moral of his story I saw why he reserved it for “his particular friends.”
But I did not tell him that 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 it to him quick, and I think I will
tell it to you. I told him of a
man out in About eight years
ago I delivered this lecture in a city that stands on that farm, and they told
me that a one-third owner for years and years had been getting one hundred and
twenty dollars in gold every fifteen minutes, sleeping or waking, without
taxation. You and I would enjoy an income like that -- if we didn’t have to pay
an income tax. But a better
illustration really than that occurred here in our town of So he sold his
farm, according to the county record, for $833 (even money, “no cents”). He had
scarcely gone from that place before the man who purchased the spot went out to
arrange for the watering of the cattle. He found the previous owner had gone
out years before and put a plank across the brook back of the barn, edgewise
into the surface of the water just a few inches. The purpose of that plank at
that sharp angle across the brook was to throw over to the other bank a dreadful-looking
scum through which the cattle would not put their noses. But with that plank
there to throw it all over to one side, the cattle would drink below, and thus
that man who had gone to Canada had been himself damming back for twenty-three
years a flood of coal-oil which the state geologists of Pennsylvania declared
to us ten years later was even then worth a hundred millions of dollars to our
state, a thousand millions of dollars. The man who owned that territory on
which the city to But I need another
illustration. I found it in They sold out in
But I do know the
other end of the line. He had scarcely gotten the other end 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 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 Then he begins to
laugh, and shakes his sides, and says to his friends, “Well, they have done
just the same thing I did, precisely”-and that spoils the whole joke, for you
and I have done the same thing he did, and while we sit here and laugh at him
he has a better right to sit out there and laugh at us. I know I have made the
same mistakes, but, of course, that does not make any difference, because we
don’t expect the same man to preach and practice, too. As I come here
to-night and look around this audience I am seeing again what through these
fifty years I have continually seen – men that are making precisely that same
mistake. I often wish I could see the younger people, and would that the
Academy had been filled to-night with our high school scholars and our
grammar-school scholars, that I could have them to talk to. While I would have
preferred such an audience as that, because they are most susceptible, as they
have not gotten into any custom that they cannot break, they have not met with
any failures as we have; and while I could perhaps do such an audience as that
more good than I can do grown-up people, yet I will do the best I can with the
material I have. I say to you that you have “acres of diamonds” in
I was greatly
interested in that account in the newspaper of the young man who found that
diamond in But it serves to
simply to illustrate my thought, which I emphasize by saying if you do not have
the actual diamond-mines literally you have all that they would be good for to
you. Because now that the Queen of England has given the greatest compliment
ever conferred upon American woman for her attire because she did not appear
with any jewels at all at the late reception in Now then, I say
again that the opportunity to get rich, to attain unto great wealth, is here in
Philadelphia now, within the reach of almost every man and woman who hears me
speak to-night, and I mean just what I say. I have not come to this platform
even under these circumstances to recite something to you. I have come to tell
you what in God’s sight I believe to be the truth, and if the years of life
have been of any value to me in the attainment of common sense, I know I am
right; that the men and women sitting here, who found it difficult perhaps to
buy a ticket to this lecture or gathering to-night, have within their reach
“acres of diamonds,” opportunities to get largely wealthy. There never was a
place on earth more adapted than the city of Philadelphia to-day, and never in
the history of the world did a poor man without capital have such an
opportunity to get rich quickly and honestly as he has now in our city. I say
it is the truth, and I want you to accept it as such; for if you think I have
come to simply recite something, then I would better not be here. I have no
time to waste in any such talk, but to say the things I believe, and unless
some of you get richer for what I am saying to night my time is wasted. I say that you
ought to get rich, and it is our duty to get rich. How many of my pious
brethren say to me, “Do you, a Christian minister, spend your time going up and
down the country advising young people to get rich, to get money?” “Yes, of
course I do.” They say, “Isn’t that awful! Why don’t you preach the gospel
instead of preaching about man’s making money?” “Because to make money honestly
is to preach the gospel.” That is the reason. The men who get rich may be the
most honest men you find in the community. “Oh,” but says some young man here
to-night, “ I have been told all my life that if a person has money he is very
dishonest and dishonorable and mean and contemptible.” My friend, that is
the reason why you have none, because you have that idea 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 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 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 auto-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 as well as in 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, true and economical and careful,
by owning the home. For a man to have
money, even in large sum, is not an inconsistent thing. We preach against
covetousness, and you know we do, in the pulpit, and oftentimes preach against
it so long and use the terms about “filthy lucre: so extremely that Christians
get the idea that when we stand in the pulpit we believe it is wicked for any
man to have money—until the collection-basket goes around, and then we almost
swear at the people because they don’t give more money. Oh, the inconsistency
of such doctrines as that! Money is power,
and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it. You ought because you can
do more good with it than you 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 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 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
Some men say,
“Don’t you sympathize with the poor people?” of course I do, or else I would
not have been lecturing these years. I wont give in but what I sympathize with
the poor, but the number of poor who are to be 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 a just punishment, is to 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 that is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor
by his own shortcomings, or by the shortcomings of some one else. It is all
wrong to be poor, anyhow. Let us 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
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 harm. In the hands of good men and women it could
accomplish, and it has accomplished, good. I hate to leave
that behind me. I heard a man get up in a prayer-meeting in our city and thank
the Lord he was “one of God’s poor.” Well, I wonder what his wife thinks about
that? She earns all the money that comes into that house, and he smokes a part
of that on the veranda. 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 advising a Christian man (or, as a Jew would say, a godly
man) from attaining unto wealth. The prejudice is so universal and the years
are far enough back, I think, for me to safely mention that years ago up at
Temple University there was a young man in our theological school who thought
he was the only pious student in that department. He came into my office on
evening and sat down by my desk, and said to me: “Mr. President, I think it is
my duty sir, to come in and labor with you.” “What has happened now?” Said he,
“I heard you say at the Academy, 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 a good
name, and made him industrious. You spoke 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 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, of one who founds his Christianity on some
misinterpretation of Scripture. He flung the Bible down on my desk, and fairly
squealed into my ear: “There it is Mr. President; you can read it yourself.” I
said to him: “Well young man, you will learn when you get a little older that
you cannot trust another denomination to read the Bible for you. You belong to
another denomination. You are taught in the theological school, however, that
emphasis is the exegesis. Now, will you take that Bible and read it yourself,
and give the proper emphasis to it?” He took the Bible,
and proudly read, “‘The love of money is the root of all evil.’” Then he
had it right, and when one does quote aright 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 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. The love of
money. What is that? It is making an idol of money, and idolatry pure and
simple every where 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
hordes his money in the cellar, or hides it in his staking, 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 “What business are
you in?” “I kept a store here for twenty years, and never made a thousand
dollars in the whole twenty years.” “Well, then, you can measure the good you
have been to this 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. If you have not made over a thousand dollars in twenty
years in Some one 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 gets all sorts of experience in every kind of mercantile
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,
thought fortunately for him that was not very often. But this did occur many
times, friends: A man would come onto the store, and say to me, “Do you keep
jack-knives?” “No 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 you keep jack-knives?” “No. Why is every
one 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 There are some
over-pious Christian people who think if you take any profit on anything 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 wife. 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 jack-knife to the third,
man or to 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 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 every-day common
sense. Oh, young man, hear me; live as you go along. Do not wait until you have
reached my years before you begin to enjoy anything of this life. If I had the
millions back, of 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 to-night. Oh, yes, I am paid over and over a hundredfold
to-night for dividing as I have tried to do in some measure as I went along
through the years. I ought not to 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 of what was his honest due, is not going home 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 is fellow-men, making and demanding his own rights and his own profits,
and giving to 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. Then man over
there who said he could not make anything in a store in If you had a store
in But another young
man gets up over there and says, “ I cannot take the mercantile business,”
(While I am talking of trade it applies to every occupation.) “Why can't you go
into the mercantile business?” “Because I haven’t any capital.” Oh, the weak
and dudish creature that can't see over its collar! It makes a person weak to
see these little dudes standing around the corners and saying, “Oh, if I had
plenty of capital, how rich would I 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 a young
man or woman gets more money than he or she has grown to by 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 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 no class of people to be pitied so much as the inexperienced sons and
daughters of the rich of our generation. I pity the rich man’s son. He can
never know the best things in life. One of the best
things in 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 a
home of his own. Then with that same love comes also that divine inspiration
toward better things, and he begins to save 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 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 thee.” 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 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
I remember one at
And when he got
into the street he laughed till the whole machine trembled. He said: “He drive
this machine! Oh, he would be lucky if he knew enough to get our when we get
there.” I must tell you
about a rich man’s son at He swelled up like
a gobbler turkey, adjusted his unseeing eye-glass, and yelled: “Come right back
here. Now, thir, will you order a thervant to take that papah and enwelophs to
yondah dethk.” 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 not capital, young man, I am glad of it. What you need is common sense,
not copper cents. The best thing I
can do is to illustrate by actual facts well known to you all. A.T. Stewart, a
poor boy in How came he to
lose 87½ cents? You probably all know the story how he lost it-because he
bought some needles, threads, and buttons to sell which people did not want,
and had 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 62½ cents to supply a known demand. Study it wherever you
choose-in business, in your profession, in your housekeeping, whatever your
life, that one thing is the secret of success. You must first know the demand.
You must first know what people need, and then invest yourself where 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 in which
Mr. Wanamaker carries on his great work in The best
illustration I ever heard was of John Jacob Astor. You know that he made the
money of the Astor family when he lived in It makes not so
much difference where you are as who you are. But if you cannot get rich in
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 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 describe 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 a different complexion, with a different shape and
color of bonnet. “Now,” said he, “put such a bonnet as that in the
show-window.” He did not fill his show-window up-town with a lot of hats and
bonnets to drive people away, and then sit on the back stairs and bawl because
people went to Wanamaker’s 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 turn in, and that has been the foundation of the greatest
store in Suppose I were to
go through this audience to-night and ask you in this great manufacturing city
if there are not opportunities 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 or three millions of dollars to begin with as
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 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 than any amount of capital can give you. There was a poor
man out of work living in “Oh,” But you say,
“didn’t he have any capital?” Yes, a penknife, but I don’t know that 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 buttonhole.
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 to-night, you see
there 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 ever really done. Notwithstanding the greatness and the
handsomeness of your compliment to-night, I do not believe there is one in ten
of you that is going to make a million of dollars because you are here
to-night; but it is not my fault, it is yours. I say that sincerely. What is
the use of my talking if people never do what I advise them to do? When her
husband 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 Now what is my
lesson in that incident? It is this: I told her then, though I did not know
her, what I say to you, “Your wealth is too near 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 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 you say a
woman doesn’t invent anything, I ask, Who invented the Jacquard loom that wove
every stitch you wear? Mrs. Jacquard. The printer’s roller, the printing press,
were invented by farmers’ wives. Who invented the cotton-gin of the South that
enriched our country so amazingly? Mrs. General Green invented the cotton gin
and showed the idea to Mr. Whitney, and he like a man, seized it. Who was it
that invented the sewing-machine? If I would go to school tomorrow and ask your
children they would say, “Elias 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. But his wife made up her
mind one day 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 mower and the reaper? According to Mr. 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 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 is nothing but
a lot of shears. If a woman can invent a mowing-machine, if a woman can invent
a Jacquard loom, if a woman can invent a cotton-gin, if a woman can invent a
trolley switch-as she did and made the trolleys possible; if a woman can
invent, as Mr. 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 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 that it is a man with a head
like a bushel measure or a man like a stroke of lighting? It is neither. The
really great man is a plain, 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 away off 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, and a
neighbor, knowing I was in a hurry, and as there was a great crowd around the
front door, took me around to General Garfield’s back door and shouted, “Jim!
Jim!” And very soon “Jim” came to the door and let me in, and I wrote the
biography of one of the grandest men of the nation, and yet he was just the
same old “Jim” to his neighbor. If you know a great man in One of my soldiers
in the Civil War had been sentenced to death, and I went up to the White House
in Washington-sent there for the first time in my life-to see the President. I
went into the waiting-room and sat down with a lot of others on the benches,
and the secretary asked one after another to tell him what they wanted. After
the secretary had been through the line, he went in, and then came back to the
door and motioned for me. I went up to that anteroom, and the secretary said:
“That is the President’s door right over there. Just rap on it and go right
in.” I was never 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 Well, I went in
and sat down on the edge of a chair, and wished I were in Then he said to
me, “How is it going in the field?” I said, “We sometimes get discouraged.” And
he said: “It is all right. We are going to win out now. We are getting very
near the light. No man ought to wish to be President of the Then he asked me,
“Were you brought up on a farm?” I said, “Yes; in the Berkshire Hills of
Massachusetts.” He then threw his leg over the corner of the big chair and
said, “I have heard many a time, ever since I was young, that up there in those
hills you have to sharpen the noses of the sheep in order to get down to the
grass between the rocks.” He was so familiar, so everyday, 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 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 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-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
But let me hasten
to one other greater thought. “Show me the great men and women who live in
Arise, you
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 greater. Let us talk up our won 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 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 That other young
man gets up and says, “There are going to great men in this country and in
We had a Peace
Jubilee here after the Spanish War. Out West they don’t believe this, because
they said, “ 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 is the king upon his throne. But we do not so teach.
We are now teaching everywhere that the generals do all the fighting. I remember that,
after the war, I went down to see General Robert E. Lee, that magnificent
Christian gentleman of whom both North and South are now proud as one of our
great Americans. The general told me about his servant, “Rastus,” who was an
enlisted colored soldier. He called him in one day to make fun of him, and
said, “Rastus, I hear that all the rest of your company are killed, and why are
you not killed?” Rastus winked at him and said, “’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. I shut my eyes-shut them close-and lo! I see the faces of my
youth. Yes, they sometimes say to me, “You 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 of my years, 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. I shut my eyes now
and look back to my native town in 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 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 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 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 kind of our day and
our time. As I came up on the platform they gave me a chair about this far, I
would say, from the front. When I had got
seated, the chairman of the Selectmen 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 which ran over the
audience when they discovered that the old fellow was going to deliver that
speech himself. He had never made a speech in his life, but he fell into the
same error that hundreds of other men have fallen into. It seems so strange
that a man won’t learn he must speak his 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, and brought with him a speech which he had learned by heart walking
up and down the pasture, where he had frightened the cattle. He brought the
manuscript with him 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, then 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. Some people say to me, “Don’t you exaggerate?” That would be impossible.
But I am here for the lesson and not for the story, and this is the way it
went” “Fellow-citizens"- As soon as he heard his voice his fingers began
to go like that, his knees begin to shake, and then he trembled all over. He
choked and swallowed and came around to the table to look at the manuscript.
Then he gathered himself up with clenched fists and came back” “Fellow-citizens,
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 to
their native town. We are especially-we are especially-we are especially. We
are especially pleased to see with us to-day this young hero” (that meant
me)-“this young hero who in imagination” (friends remember he said that’ if he
had not said “in imagination” I would have not be egotistic enough to refer to
it at all)- “this young hero who in imagination we have seen leading-we have
seen leading-leading. We have seen leading his troops on 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 man knew about war. If he had known anything about
war at all he ought to have now that any of my G. A. R. comrades here to-night
will tell you is true, that it is next to a crime for an officer of infantry
ever in time of danger to go ahead of his men. “I, with my shining sword
flashing in the sunlight, shouting to my troops, ‘Come on’!” I never did it. Do
you suppose I would get in front of my men to be shot in front by the enemy and
in the back by my own men? That is no place for an officer. The place for the
officer in actual battle is behind the line. How often, as a staff officer, I
rode down the line, when our men were suddenly called to the line of a battle,
and the Rebel yells were coming out of the woods, and shouted: “Officers to the
rear! Officers to the rear!” Then every officer gets behind the line of private
soldiers, and the higher the officer’s rank the farther behind he goes. Not
because he is any less brave, but because the laws of war require that. And yet he
shouted, “I, with my shining sword-“ In that house there sat the company of my
soldiers who had carried that boy across the Oh, I learned the
lesson then that I will never forget so long as the tongue of the bell of time
continues to swing for me. Greatness consists not in the holding of some future
office, but really consists in doing great deeds with little means and the
accomplishment of vast purposes from the private ranks of life. To be great at
all one must be great here, now, in 
Original Lecture by Dr. Russell Conwell