Acres of Diamonds | Page 7

I came from. This young man in
Massachusetts furnishes just another phase of my thought. He went to
Yale College and studied mines and mining, and became such an adept
as a mining engineer that he was employed by the authorities of the
university to train students who were behind their classes. During his

senior year he earned $15 a week for doing that work. When he
graduated they raised his pay from $15 to $45 a week, and offered him
a professorship, and as soon as they did he went right home to his
mother.
_*If they had raised that boy's pay from $15 to $15.60 he would have
stayed and been proud of the place, but when they put it up to $45 at
one leap, he said, ``Mother, I won't work for $45 a week. The idea of a
man with a brain like mine working for $45 a week!_ Let's go out in
California and stake out gold-mines and silver-mines, and be
immensely rich.''
Said his mother, ``Now, Charlie, it is just as well to be happy as it is to
be rich.''
``Yes,'' said Charlie, ``but it is just as well to be rich and happy, too.''
And they were both right about it. As he was an only son and she a
widow, of course he had his way. They always do.
They sold out in Massachusetts, and instead of going to California they
went to Wisconsin, where he went into the employ of the Superior
Copper Mining Company at $15 a week again, but with the proviso in
his contract that he should have an interest in any mines he should
discover for the company. I don't believe he ever discovered a mine,
and if I am looking in the face of any stockholder of that copper
company you wish he had discovered something or other. I have
friends who are not here because they could not afford a ticket, who did
have stock in that company at the time this young man was employed
there. This young man went out there, and I have not heard a word
from him. I don't know what became of him, and I don't know whether
he found any mines or not, but I don't believe he ever did.
But I do know the other end of the line. He had scarcely gotten out of
the old homestead before the succeeding owner went out to dig
potatoes. The potatoes were already growing in the ground when he
bought the farm, and as the old farmer was bringing in a basket of
potatoes it hugged very tight between the ends of the stone fence. You
know in Massachusetts our farms are nearly all stone wall. There you

are obliged to be very economical of front gateways in order to have
some place to put the stone. When that basket hugged so tight he set it
down on the ground, and then dragged on one side, and pulled on the
other side, and as he was dragging that basket through this farmer
noticed in the upper and outer corner of that stone wall, right next the
gate, a block of native silver eight inches square. That professor of
mines, mining, and mineralogy who knew so much about the subject
that he would not work for $45 a week, when he sold that homestead in
Massachusetts sat right on that silver to make the bargain. He was born
on that homestead, was brought up there, and had gone back and forth
rubbing the stone with his sleeve until it reflected his countenance, and
seemed to say, ``Here is a hundred thousand dollars right down here
just for the taking.'' But he would not take it. It was in a home in
Newburyport, Massachusetts, and there was no silver there, all away
off--well, I don't know where, and he did not, but somewhere else, and
he was a professor of mineralogy.
My friends, that mistake is very universally made, and why should we
even smile at him. I often wonder what has become of him. I do not
know at all, but I will tell you what I ``guess'' as a Yankee. I guess that
he sits out there by his fireside to-night with his friends gathered
around him, and he is saying to them something like this: ``Do you
know that man Conwell who lives in Philadelphia?'' ``Oh yes, I have
heard of him.'' ``Do you know that man Jones that lives in
Philadelphia?'' ``Yes, I have heard of him, too.''
Then he begins to laugh, and shakes his sides and says to his friends,
``Well, they have done just the same thing I did, precisely''--and that
spoils the whole joke, for you and I have done the same thing he