○  russell conwell : acres of diamonds  ○

"will you tell me where i find diamonds?”

"diamonds! what do you want with diamonds?”

“why, i wish to be immensely rich.”

“well, then, go along and find them. that is all you have to do; go and find them, and then you have them.”

“but i don’t know where to go.”

“well, if you will find a river that runs through white sands, between high mountains, in those white sands you will always find diamonds.”

“i don’t believe there is any such river.”

“oh yes, there are plenty of them. all you have to do is to go and find them, and then you have them.”

said ali hafed, “i will go.”

so he sold his farm, collected his money, left his family in charge of a neighbor, and away he went in search of diamonds. he began his search, very properly to my mind, at the mountains of the moon. afterward he came around into palestine, then wandered on into europe, and at last when his money was all spent and he was in rags, wretchedness, and poverty, he stood on the shore of that bay at barcelona, in spain, when a great tidal wave came rolling in between the pillars of hercules, and the poor, afflicted, suffering, dying man could not resist the awful temptation to cast himself into that incoming tide, and he sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise in this life again.

then after that old guide had told me that awfully sad story, he stopped the camel i was riding on and went back to fix the baggage that was coming off another camel, and i had an opportunity to muse over his story while he was gone. i remember saying to myself, “why did he reserve that story for his ‘particular friends’?” there seemed to be no beginning, no middle, no end, nothing to it. 

that was the first story i had ever heard told in my life, and would be the first one i ever read, in which the hero was killed in the first chapter. i had but one chapter of that story, and the hero was dead. when the guide came back and took up the h

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