Acres of Diamonds (1915) by Russell H. Conwell

acres of diamonds by russell h conwell read by randy scott this famous lecture was first published in 1890 as a short introduction to a book of the same name this edition includes a steel engraved portrait of the author and a colored plate illustration titled discovering diamonds over his lifetime conwell toured the world presenting the lecture over six thousand times before his death in 1925 continuing to develop expand and perfect the lecture it was published again in 1915. i will share it with you now this recording is a production of the master key society copyright 2021

master key society acres of diamonds by russell h conwell an appreciation though russell h conwell's acres of diamonds have been spread all over the united states time and care have made them more valuable and now that they have been reset in black and white by their discoverer they are to be laid in the hands of a multitude for their enrichment in the same case with these gems there is a fascinating story of the master jeweler's life work which splendidly illustrates the ultimate unit of power by showing what one man can do in one day and

what one life is worth to the world as a neighbor and intimate friend in philadelphia for 30 years i am free to say that russell h conwell's tall manly figure stands out in the state of pennsylvania as its first citizen and the big brother of its seven millions of people from the beginning of his career he has been a credible witness in the court of public works to the truth of the strong language of the new testament parable where it says if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed ye shall say unto this

mountain remove hints to yonder place and it shall remove and nothing shall be impossible unto you as a student schoolmaster lawyer preacher organizer thinker and writer lecturer educator diplomat and leader of men he has made his mark on his city and state and the times in which he has lived a man dies but his good work lives his ideas ideals and enthusiasms have inspired tens of thousands of lives a book full of the energetics of a master workman is just what every young man cares for 1915 his yoke fellow john wanamaker acres of diamonds friends

this lecture has been delivered under these circumstances i visit a town or city and try to arrive there early enough to see the postmaster the barber the keeper of the hotel the principal of the schools and the ministers of some of the churches and then go into some of the factories and stores and talk with the people and get into sympathy with the local conditions of that town or city and see what has been their history what opportunities they had and what they had failed to do and every town fails to do something and then

go to the lecture and talk to those people about the subjects which 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 conwell acres of diamonds this is the most recent and complete form of the lecture it happened to be delivered in philadelphia dr conwell's home city when he says right here

in philadelphia he means the home city town or village of every reader of this book just as he would use the name of it if delivering the lecture there instead of doing it through the pages which follow when going down the tigris and euphrates rivers many years ago with a party of english travelers i found myself under the direction of an old arab guide whom we hired up at baghdad and i have often thought how that guide resembled our barbers and certain mental characteristics he thought that it was not only his duty to guide us

down those rivers and do what he was paid for doing but also to entertain us with stories curious and weird ancient and modern strange and familiar many of them i have forgotten and i am glad i have but there is one i shall never forget the old guide was leading my camel by its halter along the banks of those ancient rivers and he told me story after story until i grew weary of his 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 but i determined not to look straight at him for fear he would tell another story 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 felt devoutly thankful that

there are 1674 young men who have carried through college by this lecture we're also glad that i did listen the old guy told me that there once lived not far from the river indus an ancient persian by the name of ali hafed he said that ali hafed owned a very large farm that he had orchards grain fields and gardens that he had money at interest and was a wealthy and contented man he was contented because he was wealthy and wealthy because he was contented one day there visited that old persian farmer one of these ancient

buddhist priests one of the wise men of the east he sat down by the fire and told the old farmer how this world of ours was made he said that this world was once a mere bank of fog and that the almighty thrust his finger into this spank 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 through up the mountains and hills the valleys the plains and prairies of this wonderful world of ours if this internal molten mass came bursting out and cooled very quickly it became granite less quickly copper less quickly silver less quickly gold and after gold diamonds were made said the old priest a diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight now that is literally scientifically true that a diamond is an actual deposit of carbon from the

sun the old priest told ali hafed that if he had one diamond the size of his thumb he could purchase the county and if he had a mine of diamonds he could place his children upon thrones through the influence of their great wealth ali hafed heard all about diamonds how much they were worth and went to his bed that night a poor man he had not lost anything but he was poor because he was discontented and discontented because he feared he was poor he said i want a mine of diamonds and he lay awake all

night early in the morning he sought out the priest i know by experience that a priest is very cross when awakened early in the morning and when he shook that old priest out of his dreams ali hafed said to him will you tell me where i can find diamonds diamonds what do you want with diamonds why i wish to be immensely rich well then go along and find them that is all you have to do go and find them and then you have them but i don't know where to go well if you will find

a river that runs through white sands between high mountains in those white sands you will always find diamonds i don't believe there is any such river oh yes there are plenty of them all you have to do is to go and find them and then you have them said ali have fed i will go so he sold his farm collected his money left his family in charge of a neighbor in a way he went in search of diamonds he began his search very properly to my mind at the mountains of the moon afterward he came

around into palestine then wandered on into europe and at last when his money was all spent and he was in rags wretchedness and poverty he stood on the shore of that bay at barcelona in spain when a great tidal wave came rolling in between the pillars of hercules and the poor afflicted suffering dying man could not resist the awful temptation to cast himself into that incoming tide and he sank beneath its foaming crest never to rise in this life again when that old guide had told me that awfully sad story he stopped the camel i

was riding on and went back to fix the baggage that was coming off another camel and i had an opportunity to muse over his story while he was gone i remember saying to myself why did he reserve that story for his particular friends there seemed to be no beginning no middle no end nothing to it that was the first story i had ever heard told in my life and would be the first one i ever read in which the hero was killed in the first chapter i had but one chapter of that story and the

hero was dead when the guide came back and took up the halter of my camel he went right ahead with the story into the second chapter just as though there had been no break the man who purchased ali hafed's farm one day led his camel into the garden to drink and as that camel put its nose into the shallow water of that garden brook ali hepfed'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 which covers the central fires and forgot all about it a few days later the same old priest came in to visit alihed's successor and the moment he opened that 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 have fed returned oh no aaliyah fed has not returned and that is not a diamond that is nothing but a stone we found right here in our own garden

but said the priest i tell you i know a diamond when i see it i know positively that is a diamond then together they rushed out into that old garden and stirred up the white sands with their fingers and lo there came up other more beautiful and valuable gems than the first thus said the guide to me and friends it is historically true was discover the diamond mind of golconda the most magnificent diamond mine in all the history of mankind excelling the kimberley itself the kohinoor and the orloff of the crown jewels of england and

russia the largest on earth came from that mine when that old arab guide told me the second chapter of his story he then took off his turkish cap and swung it around in the air again to get my attention to the moral those arab guides have morals to their stories although they are not always moral as he swung his hat he said to me had ali hafed remained at home and dug in his own cellar or underneath his own wheat fields or in his own garden instead of wretchedness starvation and death by suicide in a

strange land he would have had acres of diamonds for every acre of that old farm yes every shovelful afterward revealed gems which since have decorated the crowns of monarchs when he had added the moral to his story i saw why he reserved it for his particular friends but i did not tell him i could see it it was that mean old arabs 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 be better at home in america i did not tell him i could see that but i told him his story reminded me of one and i told it to him quick and i think i will tell it to you i told him of a man out of california in 1847 who owned a ranch he heard they had discovered gold in southern california and so with a passion for gold he sold his ranch to colonel sutter and away he went never to come back colonel sutter put a mill upon a stream that ran

through that ranch and one day his little girl brought some wet sand from the raceway into their home and sifted it through her fingers before the fire and in that falling sand a visitor saw the first shining scales of real gold that were ever discovered in california the man who had owned that ranch wanted gold and he could have secured it for the mere taking indeed 38 millions of dollars has been taken out of a very few acres since then about eight years ago i delivered this lecture in a city that stands on that farm

and they told me that a one-third owner for years and years had been getting 120 dollars in gold every 15 minutes sleeping or waking without taxation you and i would enjoy an income like that if we didn't have to pay an income tax but a better illustration really than that occurred here in our own pennsylvania if there is anything i enjoy above another on the platform it is to get one of these german audiences in pennsylvania before me and fire that at them and i enjoy it tonight there was a man living in pennsylvania not

unlike some pennsylvanians you have seen who owned a farm and he did with that farm just what i should do with a farm if i owned one in pennsylvania he sold it but before he sold it he decided to secure employment collecting coal oil for his cousin who was in the business in canada where they first discovered oil on this continent they dipped it from the running streams at that early time so this pennsylvania farmer wrote to his cousin asking for employment you see friends this farmer was not altogether a foolish man no he was

not he did not leave his farm until he had something else to do of all the simpletons the stars shine on i don't know of a worse one than the man who leaves one job before he has gotten another that has a special reference to my profession and has no reference whatsoever to a man seeking a divorce when he wrote to his cousin for employment his cousin replied i cannot engage you because you know nothing about the oil business well then the old farmer said i will know and with most commendable zeal characteristics of the

students of temple university he set himself at the study of the whole subject he began a way back at the second day of god's creation when this world was covered thick and deep with that rich vegetation which since has turned to the primitive beds of coal he studied the subject until he found that the drainings really of those rich beds of coal furnished the coal oil that was worth pumping and then he found how it came up with the living springs he studied until he knew what it looked like smelled like tasted like and how

to refine it now said he in his letter to his cousin i understand the oil business his cousin answered all right come on so he sold his farm according to the county record for 833 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 and the surface of the water just a few inches the purpose of

that plank at the 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 they're 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 damning back for 23 years of flood of coal oil which the state geologists of pennsylvania declared to us 10 years later was even then worth a hundred millions of dollars to our state and four years ago our geologist

declared the discovery to be worth to our state a thousand millions of dollars the man who owned that territory on which the city of titusville now stands and those pleasantville valleys had studied the subject from the second day of god's creation clear down to the present time he studied it until he knew all about it and yet he is said to have sold the whole of it for 833 dollars and again i say no sense but i need another illustration i found it in massachusetts and i'm sorry i did because that is the state i

came from this young man in massachusetts furnishes just another phrase of my thought he went to yale college and studied mines and mining and became such an adept as a mining engineer that he was employed by the authorities of the university to train students who were behind their classes during his senior year he earned 15 a week for doing that work when he graduated they raised his pay from 15 to 45 dollars a week and offered him a professorship and as soon as they did he went right home to his mother if they had raised

that boy's pay from 15 to 1560 he would have stayed and been proud of the place but when they 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 it is just as well to be happy as it is to be rich yes said charlie but it

is just as well to be rich and happy too and they were both right about it as he was an only son and she a widow of course he had his way they always do they sold out in massachusetts and instead of going to california they went to wisconsin where he went into the employ of the superior copper mining company at 15 a week again but with the proviso in his contract that he should have an interest in any minds he should discover for the company i don't believe he ever discovered a mine and if

i'm looking in the face of any stockholder of that copper company you wish he had discovered something or other i have friends who were 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 minds or not but i don't believe he ever did but i do know on 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 pooled 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 to the gate a block of native silver eight inches square that professor of mines mining mineralogy who knew so much about the subject that he would not work for 45 dollars a week when he sold that homestead in massachusetts set right on that silver to make the bargain he was born on that homestead he was brought up there 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 a 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 smile at him i often wonder what has become of him and i do not

know it all but i will tell you what i guess as 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 do you know that man jones that lives in philadelphia yes i've heard of him too then he begins to laugh and shakes his sides and says to his friends well they have done just the same thing i did precisely and that

spoils the whole joke for you and i have done the same thing he did and while we sit here and laugh at him he has a better right to sit out there and laugh at us i know i have made the same mistakes but of course that does not make any difference because we don't expect the same man to preach and practice too as i come here tonight and look around this audience i am seeing again what through these 50 years i have continually seen men that are making precisely that same mistake i often wish

i could see the younger people and with 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 an audience as that more good than i can do grown-up people

yet i will do the best i can with the material i have i say to you that you have acres of diamonds in philadelphia right where you now live oh but will you say you cannot know much about your city if you think there are any acres of diamonds here i was greatly interested in that account in the newspaper of the young man who found that diamond in north carolina it was one of the purest diamonds that has ever been discovered and it has several predecessors near the same locality i went to a distinguished professor

in meteorology and asked him where he thought those diamonds came from the professor secured the map of the geologic formations of our continent and traced it he said it went either through the underlying carboniferous strata adapted for such production westford through ohio and the mississippi or in more probability came eastward through virginia and up the shore of the atlantic ocean it is a fact that the diamonds were there for they have been discovered and sold and that they were carried down there during the drift period from some northern locality now who can say but some

person going down with his drill in philadelphia will find some trace of a diamond mine yet down here oh friends you cannot say that you are not over one of the greatest diamond mines in the world for such a diamond as that only comes from the most profitable minds that are found on earth but it serves simply to illustrate my thought which i emphasize by saying if you do not have the actual diamond mines literally you have all that they would be good for to you because now that the queen of england has given the

greatest compliment ever conferred upon american woman for her attire because she did not appear with any jewels at all at the late reception in england it has almost done away with the use of diamonds anyhow all you would care for would be the few you would wear if you wish to be modest and the rest you would sell for money now then i say again that the opportunity to get rich to attain unto great wealth is here in philadelphia now within the reach of almost every man and woman who hears me speak 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 sight i believe to be the truth and if the years of life have been of any value to me and 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 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 that 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 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 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 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 that is the reason why you have none because you have that idea of people the foundation of your faith is all together false let me say here clearly and say it briefly though subject to discussion which i have not time for here 98 out of 100 of the rich men in america are honest that is why

they are rich that is why they are trusted with money 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 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 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 that they 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 you know we do in the pulpit and oftentimes preach against it so long and use the terms about filthy lucr 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 is 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'm 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 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 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 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 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 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 that 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 of good men and women it could accomplish and 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 one 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 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 he went for the bible and soon he stalked into my office with a 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 fairly squealed into my ear there it is mr president you can read it for 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 emphasizes 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 a right from the same old book he quotes the absolute truth i have lived through 50 years of the mightiest battle that the 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 it 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 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 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 an

opportunity to get rich in philadelphia well now how simple a thing is it to see where it is and the instant you see where it is is yours some old gentleman gets up back there and says mr conwell have you lived in philadelphia for 31 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 business are you in i kept a store here for 20 years and never made over a thousand dollars in the

whole 20 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 20 years in philadelphia it would have been better for philadelphia if they had kicked you out of the city 19 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'd be a corner grocery uptown you say you cannot 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 simply supply them you would very soon see it there is wealth right within the sound of your voice someone 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 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 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 jackknives 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 jackknives no why is

everyone around here asking for jackknives do you suppose we're keeping the store to supply the whole neighborhood with jackknives 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 and 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 few years he certainly will

if he doesn't carry his religion into business if 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 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 own wife you cannot trust a man in a world that does not begin with his own heart his own character and his own life it would only 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 then 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 everyday 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 or 50 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 it went along through the years i ought not speak that way it sounds egotistic but i'm 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 his honest do 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 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 a store in philadelphia has been carrying on his store on the wrong principle suppose i go into your store tomorrow morning and ask do you know neighbor a who lives one square away at house number 1240. 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 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 were conducting your business just as i carried on my father's business in worthington massachusetts you 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 at your own door but another young man gets up over there and says i cannot take up the mercantile business while i'm 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 dutish 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 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 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 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 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 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 massachusetts showed that not one rich man's son out of 17 ever dies rich 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 do you earn all your money i did my son i began to work on a ferryboat for 25 cents a day then said his son i will have none of your money and he too tried to get employment on a ferryboat that 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 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 if her poor weak little lily-fingered 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 at niagara falls i think i remember one a great deal nearer i think there are gentlemen present who are at a great banquet and i beg pardon of his friends at a banquet here in philadelphia there sat beside me a kind-hearted young man and he said mr conwell you have been sick for two or three years when 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 6800 and he had to pay the duty on it well i said does the owner of this machine ever drive it himself and that the chauffeur laughed so heartedly 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 onto the street again and when he got out into

the street he laughed to the whole machine trembled he said he 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 the desk of the clerk there stood a millionaire 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 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 dressed like a grasshopper this human cricket came 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 english you know to lisp the will you have the kindness to supply me with

some paper and envelopes the hotel clerk measured that man quick and he pulled the envelopes and 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 right back here now thur now sir will you order a servant to take that papa and envelopes to yonder death oh the poor miserable contemptible american monkey he could not carry paper and

envelopes 20 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 sense the best thing i can do is to illustrate by actual facts well known to you all a t stuart a poor boy in new york had one dollar fifty cents to begin life on he lost eighty seven and a half cents of 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'd lose 87.5 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 62 and a half 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 stuart went on that principle until he was worth what amounted afterward to 40 millions of dollars owning the very store in which mr wanamaker carries on his great work in new york his fortune was 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 salesmen learn it when will you manufacturers learn that you must know the changing needs of humanity if you would succeed in life apply yourselves all you christian people as manufacturers or merchants are 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 astor 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 well they could make those fortunes over in new york but they could not do it in philadelphia my friends did you ever read that wonderful book of reese his memory is sweet to us because of his recent death wherein is given his statistical account of the records taken in 1889 of 107

millionaires of new york if you read the account you will see that out of the 107 millionaires only seven made their money in new york out of the 107 millionaires worth 10 million in real estate then 67 of them made their money in towns of less than 3 500 inhabitants the richest man in this country today if you read the real estate values has never moved away from a town of 3 500 inhabitants it makes not 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 jacob asked her 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 foreclosed on 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 the shade what was john jacob astor doing out there and in partnership with people who had failed on his own hands he had the most important and to my mind the most pleasant part of that partnership on his hands 4 as john jacob astor sat on that bench he was watching the ladies as they went by and where is the 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 at the front as if she did not care if all the world did gaze on her he then 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 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 on 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 miliary 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 do not make up anymore until i come back then he went out sat down again and another lady passed him of a different form of 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 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 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 astor 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 and making them up i tell you if a man could foresee the military 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 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 his capital young man the history of the breaking up of the trust 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 hingham massachusetts he lounged 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 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 sell them you could make money at that oh 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 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 a doll's wash stand in a doll's carriage a little doll's umbrella and went on with a list of things that 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 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 mr lawson in his frenzied finance says that man is the richest man in old massachusetts and i think that is the truth and that man is worth a hundred millions of dollars today and has been only 34 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 pin knife 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'm going to get up something better than that to put on collars her husband said after what conwell said tonight you see there is a need of an improved color 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 constantly 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 tonight i do not believe there is one in ten of you that is going to make a million dollars because you are here tonight 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 new england woman who invented the snap button which you can find anywhere now it was first a color button with a spring cap attached to the outer side any of you who wear 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 private steamship yes 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 count or some such title as that as 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 to you you were looking right over it and she had to look over 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 farmer's wives who invented the cotton gin of the south that enriched our country so amazingly mrs general greene 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 to 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 14 years to get up that sewing machine 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 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 one way it closed them and 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 have been a jaccard 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 miss 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 this 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 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 plain straightforward everyday 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 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 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 gym to his neighbor if you 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 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 them 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 on that anteroom and the secretary said that is the president's door right over there just wrap 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 united states of america's door i had been on fields of battle but 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 shells came around us at antietam as it was when i went into that room that day but i finally mustered the courage i don't know how i ever did at an arm's length tapped on the door the man 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 he was one of the world's greatest men it 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 our civilization abraham lincoln's principle for greatness can be adopted by nearly all this was his rule whatsoever he had to do it all he put his whole mind into it and held it all

there until that was all done that makes great men almost anywhere he stuck to those papers at the 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 him over to one side 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 is it you want i began to tell him and mentioned the case and

he said i have heard all about it and you do not need to say any more mr stanton was 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 an order to shoot a boy under 20 years of age and never will you can say that to his mother anyhow then he said to me how's 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 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 25 cents a day ted has a mule team and we're 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 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 a 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 when still in the city i saw a 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 on to ultimate liberty yet he was only old abe to his neighbors 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 tomb 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 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 massachusetts who had worked in the nail works was injured at 38 and he could earn but little money he was employed in the office to rub out the marks 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 there was a patent and that was the first thought of that he went to boston and applied for his patent and every one of you that has a rubber tipped pencil

in your pocket is now paying tribute to the millionaire no capital not a penny did he invest in it all was income all the way up into the millions but let me hasten to one other great 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 a way 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 i've come now to the heart of the whole matter and to the center of my struggle why isn't philadelphia a greater city in 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 is because our own people talked down their own city if there ever was a community on earth that has to be forced ahead it is the city of philadelphia if we are to have a boulevard

talk it down if we're going to have better schools talk them down if you wish to have wise legislation talk it down talk all the proposed improvements down that 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's our 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 st louis and san francisco do oh if

we only could get that spirit out among our people that we can do things in philadelphia and do them well a rising 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 that there was never an opportunity greater let us talk up our own city but there are two other young men here tonight 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'm elected to some political office young man won't you learn a lesson in the primer of politics that is a prima facie evidence of littleness 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 is but the servant of the people 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 the 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 next 10 years i know of a great many young women now that women's suffrage is coming who say i

am going to be president of the united states someday i believe in women's suffrage and there is no doubt but what is coming and i'm getting out of the way anyhow i may want an office by and by myself but if the ambition for an office 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 boats do you think it is it is governed by influence it is governed by the ambitions and the enterprises which control votes the young woman that thinks she is going to vote for the sake of holding an office is making an awful blunder the other young man gets up and says there are going to be great men in this country and 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 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 were going to be made great by an office but remember

that if you are not great before you get the office 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 out west they don't believe this because they said philadelphia would not have heard of any spanish war until 50 years hence some of you saw the procession go up broad street i was away but the family wrote to me that the tallyho coach with lieutenant hobson and pawnet stopped right at the front door and the people shouted hooray for

hobson and if i had been there i would have yelled too because he deserves much more of this 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 me 7 8 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 or 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 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 because when there is any fighting going 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 25 years 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 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 i look back to

my native town in massachusetts and i see the cattle show ground on the mountaintop 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 respondently and i can see flags flying and handkerchiefs waving and hear bands playing i can see that company of soldiers that had re-enlisted marching up on that cattle show ground 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 pieces then i thought it was the greatest event that ever came to man on earth if you have ever thought you would be like 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 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 a fence 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 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 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 had got seated the

chairman of the select men arose and came forward to the table and we all supposed he would introduce the congressional minister who was the only orator in town and that he would give the ortation 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 era that hundreds of other men have fallen into it seems so strange that a man won't learn

he must speak his peace 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 for

a moment and marched back on that platform and then came forward like this he must have studied the subject a great deal when you come to think of it because he assumed an elocutionary attitude he rested heavily upon his left heel through back his shoulders slightly advanced the right foot opened the organs of speech and advanced his right foot at an angle of 45. 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 began 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 fist 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 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 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 have seen leading leading we have seen leading his troops onto

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 known that any of my gar 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 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 and the rebel yells we're 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 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 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 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 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 he who can give to the 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 hear if you never hear me again remember this that if you wish to be great at all you must begin where you

are and what you are in philadelphia now he that can give to his 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 wherever 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 this recording may contain antiquated language expressions and ideas while worthy of study the views and opinions contained within this book may not necessarily reflect those of master

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