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expired he had ninety thousand dollars and had built a beautiful palace on the site of that tree. After forty
years owning that tree he awoke to find it had fortunes of money indeed in it. And many of us are right by the
tree that has a fortune for us, and we own it, possess it, do what we will with it, but we do not learn its value
because we do not see the human need, and in these discoveries and inventions this is one of the most
romantic things of life.
I have received letters from all over the country and from England, where I have lectured, saying that they
have discovered this and that, and one man out in Ohio took me through his great factories last spring, and
said that they cost him $680,000, and said he, "I was not worth a cent in the world when I heard your lecture
'Acres of Diamonds;' but I made up my mind to stop right here and make my fortune here, and here it is." He
showed me through his unmortgaged possessions. And this is a continual experience now as I travel through
the country, after these many years. I mention this incident, not to boast, but to show you that you can do the
same if you will.
Who are the great inventors? I remember a good illustration in a man who used to live in East Brookfield,
Mass. He was a shoemaker, and he was out of work, and he sat around the house until his wife told him to "go
out doors." And he did what every husband is compelled by law to do--he obeyed his wife. And he went out
and sat down on an ash barrel in his back yard. Think of it! Stranded on an ash barrel and the enemy in
possession of the house! As he sat on that ash barrel, he looked down into that little brook which ran through
that back yard into the meadows, and he saw a little trout go flashing up the stream and hiding under the bank.
I do not suppose he thought of Tennyson's beautiful poem:
"Chatter, chatter, as I flow, To join the brimming river, Men may come, and men may go, But I go on
forever."
But as this man looked into the brook, he leaped off that ash barrel and managed to catch the trout with his
fingers, and sent it to Worcester. They wrote back that they would give him a five dollar bill for another such
trout as that, not that it was worth that much, but they wished to help the poor man. So this shoemaker and his
wife, now perfectly united, that five dollar bill in prospect, went out to get another trout. They went up the
stream to its source and down to the brimming river, but not another trout could they find in the whole stream;
and so they came home disconsolate and went to the minister. The minister didn't know how trout grew, but
he pointed the way. Said he, "Get Seth Green's book, and that will give you the information you want." They
did so, and found all about the culture of trout. They found that a trout lays thirty-six hundred eggs every year
and every trout gains a quarter of a pound every year, so that in four years a little trout will furnish four tons
per annum to sell to the market at fifty cents a pound. When they found that, they said they didn't believe any
such story as that, but if they could get five dollars apiece they could make something. And right in that same
back yard with the coal sifter up stream and window screen down the stream, they began the culture of trout.
They afterwards moved to the Hudson, and since then he has become the authority in the United States upon
the raising of fish, and he has been next to the highest on the United States Fish Commission in Washington.
My lesson is that man's wealth was out there in his back yard for twenty years, but he didn't see it until his
wife drove him out with a mop stick.
I remember meeting personally a poor carpenter of Hingham, Massachusetts, who was out of work and in
CHAPTER XXXI 263
poverty. His wife also drove him out of doors. He sat down on the shore and whittled a soaked shingle into a
wooden chain. His children quarreled over it in the evening, and while he was whittling a second one, a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]