Acres of Diamonds
By Russell H. Conwell (1843–1925)
Edited and condensed for easier reading by
Sharon Iezzi
In 1870 we went down the Tigris River. We hired a guide
at Bagdad to show us Persepolis, Nineveh and Babylon,
and the ancient countries of Assyria as far as the
Arabian Gulf.
He was well acquainted with the land, but he was one of
those guides who love to entertain their patrons; he
was like a barber that tells you many stories in order
to keep your mind off the scratching and the scraping.
He told me so many stories that I grew tired of his
telling them and I refused to listen -- looked away
whenever he commenced; that made the guide quite angry.
I remember that toward evening he took his Turkish cap
off his head and swung it around in the air. The
gesture I did not understand and I did not dare look
at him for fear I should become the victim of another
story. But, although I am not a woman, I did look,
and the instant I turned my eyes upon that worthy
guide he was off again. Said he, "I will tell you a
story now which I reserve for my particular friends!"
So then, counting myself a particular friend, I
listened, and I have always been glad I did.
He said there once lived not far from the River Indus
an ancient Persian by the name of Al Hafed. He said
that Al Hafed owned a very large farm with orchards,
grain fields and gardens. He was a contented and
wealthy man -- contented because he was wealthy, and
wealthy because he was contented.
One day there visited this old farmer one of those
ancient Buddhist priests, and he sat down by Al
Hafed's fire and told that old farmer how this world
of ours was made.
He said that this world was once a mere bank of fog,
which is scientifically true, and he said that the
Almighty thrust his finger into the bank of fog and
then began slowly to move his finger around and
gradually to increase the speed of his finger until
at last he whirled that bank of fog into a solid ball
of fire, and it went rolling through the universe,
burning its way through other cosmic banks of fog,
until it condensed the moisture without, and fell in
floods of rain upon the heated surface and cooled the
outward crust.
Then the internal flames burst through the cooling
crust and threw up the mountains and made the hills
and the valleys of this wonderful world of ours. If
this internal melted mass burst out and cooled very
quickly it became granite; that which cooled less
quickly became silver; and less quickly, gold; and
after gold diamonds were made. Said the old priest,
"A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight."
This is a scientific truth also. You all know that a
diamond is pure carbon, actually deposited sunlight
-- and he said another thing I would not forget: he
declared that a diamond is the last and highest of
God's mineral creations, as a woman is the last and
highest of God's animal creations. I suppose that is
the reason why the two have such a liking for each
other.
And the old priest told Al Hafed that if he had a
handful of diamonds he could purchase a whole
country, and with a mine of diamonds he could place
his children upon thrones through the influence of
their great wealth.
Al Hafed heard all about diamonds and how much they
were worth, and went to his bed that night a poor
man -- not that he had lost anything, but poor
because he was discontented and discontented
because he thought he was poor. He said: "I want
a mine of diamonds!" So he lay awake all night,
and early in the morning sought out the priest.
Now I know from experience that a priest when
awakened early in the morning is cross. He awoke
that priest out of his dreams and said to him,
"Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?"
The priest said, "Diamonds? What do you want with
diamonds?"
"I want to be immensely rich," said Al Hafed,
"but I don't know where to go."
"Well," said the priest, "if you will find a river
that runs over white sand between high mountains,
in those sands you will always see diamonds."
"Do you really believe that there is such a river?"
"Plenty of them, plenty of them; all you have to
do is just go and find them, then you have them."
Al Hafed said, "I will go."
So he sold his farm, collected his money at
interest, left his family in charge of a neighbor,
and away he went in search of diamonds.
He began very properly, to my mind, at the Mountains
of the Moon. Afterwards he went 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 in Barcelona, Spain, when a tidal
wave came rolling in through the Pillars of Hercules
and the poor, afflicted, suffering 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 very sad story,
he stopped the camel I was riding and went back to
fix the baggage on one of the other camels, and I
remember thinking to myself, "Why did he reserve
that for his particular friends?" There seemed to
be no beginning, middle or end -- nothing to it.
That was the first story I ever heard told or 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 again, he went right on with the same
story. He said that Al Hafed's successor led his
camel out into the garden to drink, and as that
camel put its nose down into the clear water of
the garden brook Al Hafed's successor noticed a
curious flash of light from the sands of the
shallow stream, and reaching in he pulled out a
black stone having an eye of light that reflected
all the colors of the rainbow, and he took that
curious pebble into the house and left it on the
mantel, then went on his way and forgot all about
it.
A few days after that, this same old priest who
told Al Hafed how diamonds were made, came in to
visit his successor, when he saw that flash of
light from the mantel. He rushed up and said,
"Here is a diamond -- here is a diamond! Has Al
Hafed returned?"
"No, no; Al Hafed has not returned and that is not
a diamond; that is nothing but a stone; we found
it right out here in our garden."
"But I know a diamond when I see it," said he;
"that is a diamond!"
Then together they rushed to the garden and stirred
up the white sands with their fingers and found
others more beautiful, more valuable diamonds than
the first.
Thus, said the guide to me, were discovered the
diamond mines of Golconda, the most magnificent
diamond mine in all the history of mankind,
exceeding the Kimberley in its value. The great
Kohinoor diamond in England's crown jewels and the
largest crown diamond on earth in Russia's
crown jewels, came from that mine.
when the old guide had called my attention to that
wonderful discovery he took his Turkish cap off
his head again and swung it around in the air to
call my attention to the moral.
Those Arab guides have a moral to each story, though
the stories are not always moral. He said had Al
Hafed remained at home and dug in his own cellar
or in his own garden, instead of wretchedness,
starvation, poverty and death -- a strange land,
he would have had "acres of diamonds" -- for every
acre, yes, every shovelful of that old farm
afterwards revealed the gems which since have
decorated the crowns of monarchs.
When he had given the moral to his story, I saw why
he had reserved this story for his "particular
friends." I didn't tell him I could see it; I was
not going to tell that old Arab that I could see it.
For it was that mean old Arab's way of going around
such a thing, like a lawyer, and saying indirectly
what he did not dare say directly, that there was a
certain young man that day traveling down the Tigris
River that might better be at home in America. I
didn't tell him I could see it.
I told him his story reminded me of one, and I told
it to him quick. I told him about that man out in
California, who, in 1847, owned a ranch out there.
He read that gold had been discovered in Southern
California, and he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter
and started off to hunt for gold. Colonel Sutter put
a mill on the little stream in that farm and one day
his little girl brought some wet sand from the raceway
of the mill into the house and placed it before the
fire to dry, and as that sand was falling through the
little girl's fingers a visitor saw the first shining
scales of real gold that were ever discovered in
California; and the man who wanted the gold had sold
his ranch and gone away, never to return.
While lecturing two years ago In California, in the
city that stands near that farm, they told me that
the mine is not exhausted yet, and that a one-third
owner of that farm has been getting during these recent
years twenty dollars of gold every fifteen minutes of
his life, sleeping or waking. Why, you and I would
enjoy an income like that!
But the best illustration that I have now of this
thought was found here in Pennsylvania:
There was a man living in Pennsylvania who owned a farm
here and he did what I should do if I had a farm in
Pennsylvania - he sold it. But before he sold it he
concluded to secure employment collecting coal oil
for his cousin in Canada. They first discovered coal
oil there. So this farmer in Pennsylvania decided that
he would apply for a position with his cousin in Canada.
Now, you see, the farmer was not altogether a foolish
man. He did not leave his farm until he had something
else to do.
He wrote to Canada, but his cousin replied that he could
not engage him because he did not know anything about the
oil business. "Well, then," said he, "I will understand
it." So he set himself at the study of the whole subject.
He studied the subject from the primitive vegetation to
the coal oil stage, until he knew all about it. Then he
wrote to his cousin and said, "Now I understand the oil
business." And his cousin replied to him, "All right,
then, come on."
That man, by the record of the country, sold his farm for
eight hundred and thirty-three dollars -- even money,
"no cents."
He had scarcely gone from that farm before the man who
purchased it went out to arrange for watering the cattle
and he found that the previous owner had arranged the
matter very nicely. There is a stream running down the
hillside there, and the previous owner had gone out and
put a plank across that stream at an angle, extending
across the brook and down edgewise a few inches under
the surface of the water.
The purpose of the plank across that brook was to throw
over to the other bank a dreadful-looking scum through
which the cattle would not put their noses to drink
above the plank, although they would drink the water
on one side below it.
Thus that man who had gone to Canada had been himself
damming back for twenty-three years a flow of coal oil
which the State Geologist of Pennsylvania declared
officially, as early as 1870, was then worth to our
state a hundred millions of dollars!
The city of Titusville now stands on that farm and those
Pleasantville wells flow on, and that farmer who had
studied all about the formation of oil from the second
day of God's creation down to the present time, sold
that farm for $833, no cents -- again I say, "no sense."
But I need another illustration. I found it in
Massachusetts, and I am sorry I did, because that is
my old state.
This young man I mention went out of the state to study
at Yale College. He studied mines and mining. The
college paid him fifteen dollars a week during his
senior year for training students who were behind in
their classes in mineralogy.
When he graduated they raised his pay from fifteen
dollars to forty-five dollars and offered him a
professorship. Then he went straight home to his
mother and said,
"Mother, I won't work for forty-five dollars a week.
What is forty-five dollars a week for a man with a
brain like mine! Mother, let's go out to California
and stake out gold claims and be immensely rich."
"Now," said his mother, "it is just as well to be
happy as it is to be rich."
But as he was the only son he had his way -- they
always do; and they sold out in Massachusetts and went
to Wisconsin, where he went into the employ of the
Superior Copper Mining Company, and he was lost from
sight in the employ of that company at fifteen dollars
a week again. He was also to have an interest in any
mines that he should discover for that company. But I
do not believe that he has ever discovered a mine.
I know he had scarcely gone from the old homestead
before the farmer who had bought the homestead (in
Massachusetts) went out to dig potatoes, and he was
bringing them in a large basket through the front
gateway, the ends of the stone wall came so near
together at the gate that the basket hugged very
tight. So he set the basket on the ground and pulled,
first on one side and then on the other side.
Our farms in Massachusetts are mostly stone walls,
and the farmers have to be economical with their
gateways in order to have some place to put the
stones. That basket hugged so tight there that as
he was hauling it through he noticed in the upper
stone next the gate a block of native silver, eight
inches square.
This professor of mines and mining and mineralogy,
who would not work for forty-five dollars a week,
when he sold that homestead in Massachusetts, sat
right on that stone to make the bargain. He was
brought up there; he had gone back and forth by that
piece of silver, rubbed it with his sleeve, and it
seemed to say, "Come now, now, now, here is a
hundred thousand dollars. Why not take me?"
But he would not take it. There was no silver in
Newburyport; it was all away off -- well, I don't
know where; he didn't, but somewhere else -- and
he was a professor of mineralogy.
I wish I knew what that man is doing out there in
Wisconsin. I can imagine him out there, as he sits
by his fireside, and he is saying to his friends,
"Do you know that man Conwell that lives in
Philadelphia?" "Oh, yes, I have heard of him."
"And do you know that man Jones that lives in that
city?" "Yes, I have heard of him." And then he
begins to laugh and laugh and says to his friends,
"They have done the same thing I did, precisely."
And that spoils the whole joke, because you and I
have done it ...
But persons with certain religious prejudice
will ask, "How can you spend your time advising the
rising generation to give their time to getting
money -- dollars and cents -- the commercial spirit?"
Yet I must say that you ought to spend time getting
rich. You and I know there are some things more
valuable than money; of course, we do. Ah, yes! By
a heart made unspeakably sad by a grave on which
the autumn leaves now fall, I know there are some
things higher and grander and sublimer than money.
Well does the man know, who has suffered, that there
are some things sweeter and holier and more sacred
than gold. Nevertheless, the man of common sense also
knows that there is not any one of those things that
is not greatly enhanced by the use of money. Money
is power.
Love is the grandest thing on God's earth, but
fortunate the lover who has plenty of money.
Money is power: money has powers; and for a man to
say, "I do not want money," is to say, "I do not wish
to do any good to my fellowmen."
It is absurd thus to talk. It is absurd to disconnect
them. This is a wonderfully great life, and you ought
to spend your time getting money, because of the power
there is in money. And yet this religious prejudice is
so great that some people think it is a great honor to
be one of God's poor. I am looking in the faces of
people who think just that way.
I heard a man once say in a prayer-meeting that he was
thankful that he was one of God's poor, and then I
silently wondered what his wife would say to that
speech, as she took in washing to support the man while
he sat and smoked on the veranda.
I don't want to see any more of that kind of God's poor.
Now, when a man could have been rich just as well, and
he is now weak because he is poor, he has done some
great wrong; he has been untruthful to himself; he has
been unkind to his fellowmen.
We ought to get rich if we can by honorable and Christian
methods, and these are the only methods that sweep us
quickly toward the goal of riches.
I remember, not many years ago, a young theological student
who came into my office and said to me that he thought it
was his duty to come in and "labor with me." I asked him
what had happened, and he said: "I feel it is my duty to
come in and speak to you, sir, and say that the Holy
Scriptures declare that money is the root of all evil."
I asked him where he found that saying, and he said he
found it in the Bible. I asked him whether he had made a
new Bible, and he said, no, he had not gotten a new Bible,
that it was in the old Bible.
"Well," I said, "if it is in my Bible, I never saw it. Will
you please get the textbook and let me see it?" ...
So he [the student] took the Bible and read it:
"The love of money is the root of all evil."
Then he had it right ...
when he quoted right from the Scriptures he quoted the truth.
"The love of money is the root of all evil." It is the
worship of the means instead of the end. Though you cannot
reach the end without the means.
When a man makes an idol of the money instead of the purposes
for which it may be used, when he squeezes the dollar until
the eagle squeals, then it is made the root of all evil.
Think, if you only had the money, what you could do for your
wife, your child, and for your home and your city. Think how
soon you could endow the Temple College yonder if you only
had the money and the disposition to give it; and yet,
my friend, people say you and I should not spend the time
getting rich.
How inconsistent the whole thing is. We ought to be rich,
because money has power.
I think the best thing for me to do is to illustrate this, for
if I say you ought to get rich, I ought, at least, to suggest
how it is done. We get a prejudice against rich men because
of the lies that are told about them ...
One of the richest men in this country came into my home and
sat down in my parlor and said: "Did you see all those lies
about my family in the papers?"
"Certainly I did; I knew they were lies when I saw them."
"Why do they lie about me the way they do?"
"Well," I said to him, "if you will give me your check for one
hundred millions, I will take all the lies along with it."
"Well," said he, "I don't see any sense in their thus talking
about my family and myself. Conwell, tell me frankly, what do
you think the American people think of me?"
"Well," said I, "they think you are the blackest hearted villain
that ever trod the soil!"
"But what can I do about it?"
There is nothing he can do about it, and yet he is one of the
sweetest Christian men I ever knew. If you get a hundred millions
you will have the lies; you will be lied about, and you can judge
your success in any line by the lies that are told about you.
I say that you ought to be rich ...
Did you ever study the history of invention and see how strange it
was that the man who made the greatest discovery did it without
any previous idea that he was an inventor? Who are the great
inventors? They are persons with plain, straightforward common
sense, who saw a need in the world and immediately applied
themselves to supply that need ...
I was once lecturing in North Carolina, and the cashier of the bank
sat directly behind a lady who wore a very large hat. I said to
that audience, "Your wealth is too near to you; you are looking
right over it." He whispered to his friend, "Well, then, my wealth
is in that hat." A little later, as he wrote me, I said, "Wherever
there is a human need there is a greater fortune than a mine can
furnish." He caught my thought, and he drew up his plan for a
better hat pin than was in the hat before him and the pin is now
being manufactured. He was offered fifty-two thousand dollars for
his patent. That man made his fortune before he got out of that
hall. This is the whole question: Do you see a need?" ...
Who are the great inventors? I remember a good illustration in
a man who used to live in East Brookfield, Massachusetts. He was a
shoemaker, and he was out of work and he sat around the house
until his wife told him "to go out doors." And he did what
every husband is compelled by law to do -- he obeyed his wife.
And he went out and sat down on an ash barrel in his back yard.
Think of it! Stranded on an ash barrel and the enemy in
possession of the house! As he sat on that ash barrel, he
looked down into that little brook which ran through that back
yard into the meadows, and he saw a little trout go flashing up
the stream and hiding under the bank. I do not suppose he
thought of Tennyson's beautiful poem:
"Chatter, chatter as I flow,
To join the brimming river,
Men may come, and men may go,
But I go on forever."
But as this man looked into the brook, he leaped off that ash
barrel and managed to catch the trout with his fingers, and
sent it to Worcester. They wrote back that they would give a
fivedollar bill for another such trout as that, not that it was
worth that much, but they wished to help the poor man. So this
shoemaker and his wife, now perfectly united, that five-dollar
bill in prospect, went out to get another trout. They went up
the stream to its source and down to the brimming river, but
not another trout could they find in the whole stream; and so
they came home disconsolate and went to the minister.
The minister didn't know how trout grew, but he pointed the way.
Said he, "Get Seth Green's book, and that will give you the
information you want."
They did so, and found all about the culture of trout. They found
that a trout lays thirty-six hundred eggs every year and every
trout gains a quarter of a pound every year, so that in four
years a little trout will furnish four tons per annum to sell
to the market at fifty cents a pound. When they found that,
they said they didn't believe any such story as that, but if
they could get five dollars apiece they could make something.
And right in that same back yard with the coal sifter up stream
and window screen down the stream, they began the culture of
trout. They afterwards moved to the Hudson, and since then he
has become the authority in the United States upon the raising
of fish, and he has been next to the highest on the United
States Fish Commission in Washington.
My lesson is that man's wealth was out here in his back yard for
twenty years, but he didn't see it until his wife drove him out
with a mop stick.
I remember meeting personally a poor carpenter of Hingham,
Massachusetts, who was out of work and in poverty. His wife
also drove him out of doors. He sat down on the shore and
whittled a soaked shingle into a wooden chain. His children
quarreled over it in the evening, and while he was whittling
a second one, a neighbor came along and said, "Why don't you
whittle toys if you can carve like that?" He said, "I don't
know what to make!"
There is the whole thing. His neighbor said to him: "Why
don't you ask your own children?" Said he, "What is the
use of doing that? My children are different from other
people's children." I used to see people like that when
I taught school. The next morning when his boy came down
the stairway, he said, "Sam, what do you want for a toy?"
"I want a wheelbarrow." When his little girl came down,
he asked her what she wanted, and she said, "I want a little
doll's wash-stand, a little doll's carriage, a little doll's
umbrella," and went on with a whole lot of things that would
have taken his lifetime to supply. He consulted his own
children right there in his own house and began to whittle
out toys to please them.
He began with his jack-knife, and made those unpainted
Hingham toys. He is the richest man in the entire New
England States, if Mr. Lawson is to be trusted in his
statement concerning such things, and yet that man's
fortune was made by consulting his own children in his
own house!
You don't need to go out of your own house to find out
what to invent or what to make ...
If you forget everything I have said to you, do not forget
this, because it contains in just two lines more than
all I have said ...
We live in deeds, not years:
In thoughts not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heartthrobs.
He most lives who thinks most,
feels the noblest, acts the best.
-- David Bailey (British Photographer)
Publisher's Note:: This story has circulated widely
on the Internet in various versions. To the best of my knowledge it is
in the public domain. No copyright infringement was or is intended.
"Acres of Diamonds" was originally presented
as a lecture by Russell H. Connell, founder of
Temple University.
By the end of his life in 1925, Dr. Connell had presented
this lecture over 6,000 times in towns all over the world.
It remains one of the classic inspirational stories of all time.
