The way has been blazed, the path has been pointed out, it only remains for those who follow after to walk therein. And if they walk therein, they will gain that true greatness and deep happiness which Phillips Brooks says comes ever "to the man who has given his life to his race, who feels that what God gives him, He gives him for mankind."
ACRES OF DIAMONDS
Dr. Conwell's most famous lecture and one of his earliest has been given at this writing (October, 1905) 3420 times. The income from it if invested at regular rates of interest would have amounted very nearly to one million dollars.
PERSONAL GLIMPSES OF CELEBRATED MEN AND WOMEN
Is Dr. Conwell's latest lecture. It is a backward glance over his own life in which he tells in his inimitable fashion many of its most interesting scenes and incidents. It is here published for the first time.
ACRES OF DIAMONDS.[A]
[Footnote A: Reported by A. Russell Smith and Harry E. Greager.]
[Mr. Conwell's lectures are all delivered extemporaneously and differ greatly from night to night.—Ed.]
I am astonished that so many people should care to hear this story over again. Indeed, this lecture has become a study in psychology; it often breaks all rules of oratory, departs from the precepts of rhetoric, and yet remains the most popular of any lecture I have delivered in the forty-four years of my public life. I have sometimes studied for a year upon a lecture and made careful research, and then presented the lecture just once—never delivered it again. I put too much work on it. But this had no work on it—thrown together perfectly at random, spoken offhand without any special preparation, and it succeeds when the thing we study, work over, adjust to a plan is an entire failure.
The "Acres of Diamonds" which I have mentioned through so many years are to be found in Philadelphia, and you are to find them. Many have found them. And what man has done, man can do. I could not find anything better to illustrate my thought than a story I have told over and over again, and which is now found in books in nearly every library.