Acres of Diamond by Russell H. Conwwell

Extracts from the book "Acres of Diamonds".

The old guide said, "I will tell you a story now which I reserve for my particular friends."

An old priest visited an old Persian farmer, named Ali Hafed. The priest told Ali that 'a diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight'. Scientifically this is true, that a diamond is an actual deposit of carbon from the sun. Ali asked the priest, "Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?"

The priest said, "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." So Ali sold his farm and set out far to Palestine, then Europe, and at last when his money was all spent and he was in rags and poverty, he stood at the shore of Barcelona, in Spain and cast himself into that incoming tide, and sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise in this life again.

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's successor noticed a curious flash of light from the white sands of the stream. He pulled out a black stone having an eye of light reflecting all the hues of the rainbow. He took the pebble into the house and put it on the mantel which covers the central fires, and forgot all about it.

A few days later this same old priest came to visit Ali's successor and saw the flash of light on the mantel, and shouted" "Here's a diamond! Has Ali returned?" "Oh no, Ali has not returned, and that is not a diamond. "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 discovered the diamond-mine of Golconda, the most magnificent diamond-mine in all the history of mankind. The Kohinoor, and the Orloff of the crown jewels of England and Russia, the largest on earth, came from that mine."

Moral of the story : "Had Ali remained at home and dug in his own cellar, or underneath his own wheat-fields, or in his own garden, he would have had 'acres of diamonds.'

The idea is that 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.