Diamonds

Acres of Diamonds is undoubtedly the world's most famous lecture. It has been given by Dr. Russell H. Conwell, President of Temple University, Philadelphia, to 6,150 audiences. Dr. Conwell claimed last week that he had raised $12,000,000 for charity by this one lecture. At the same time, he announced that he, aged 81, never more would lecture.

The lecture begins with an anecdote which Dr. Conwell claims to have heard from a Persian guide who was taking him down the Tigris. An ancient merchant dreamt a dream of diamonds, acres of diamonds and, on awaking from sleep, went to a priest of Buddha to ask where he should go to find such riches. The priest told him that if he could find a river that flowed over white sand between high mountains, the bed of that river would be full of diamonds. The merchant sold his orchards, granaries, fields, gardens, and traveled "over all the world" until he died; but he never found the jewels of which, sleeping and waking, he dreamt; while the man to whom he had sold his mansion found diamonds in the stream that watered the garden, thus discovering the famed mines of the Golconda. Taking the thread of this tale, Dr. Conwell elaborated it with over 30 minor anecdotes. He quoted Bailey, the Bible, Garfield, Grant, Robert E. Lee, Rockefeller, Tennyson. In his delivery, he incorporated every known artifice of the pulpit, the stump and the vaudeville stage. He larded his sentences with such aphorisms as:

"He is an enemy to his country who sets Capital against Labor."

"Even if a rich man's son retains his father's money he cannot know the best things of life."

"We ought to get rich by honorable Christian methods; and these are the only methods that sweep us quickly toward the goal of riches."

Such statements he salted with catchy quips, shrewd witticisms. It is believed by some that great numbers of people owe their fortunes to having heard this lecture.