Acres of Diamonds: In Your Own Garden

In the first part, Ali Hafed sold his farm to search the world for diamonds and died poor, far from home.Conwell thought the story had no point, until the guide went on to its second chapter.

“One day the man who had bought Ali Hafed’s farm led his camel into the garden to drink. As the camel put its nose into the shallow brook, he noticed a strange flash of light in the white sand.He pulled out a black stone that shone with all the colors of the rainbow, carried it into the house, put it on the mantel, and forgot all about it.

A few days later the same old priest came to visit. The moment he opened the door, he saw the flash on the mantel and rushed toward it, shouting, ‘Here is a diamond! Has Ali Hafed returned?’‘No, Ali Hafed has not returned,’ said the new owner, ‘and that is not a diamond. It is only a stone we found in our own garden.’But the priest knew a diamond when he saw one. Together they ran out to the garden, stirred the white sands with their fingers, and found more stones, even more beautiful than the first.

That, the guide told me, was how the diamond mine of Golconda was discovered, one of the richest mines in history. The famous Kohinoor diamond in the crown jewels of England came from it.Then he gave me the moral: had Ali Hafed stayed at home and dug in his own fields or his own garden, instead of dying poor in a strange land, he would have had ‘acres of diamonds.’

We have the same story in our own country. A farmer in Pennsylvania wanted to work in the oil business, so he studied oil until he knew everything about it: what it looked like, how it smelled and how to clean it.He was wise in one thing: he did not leave his farm until he had another job to go to, and I know of no greater fool than the man who leaves one job before he has found another. Then he sold the farm for eight hundred and thirty-three dollars and moved away.

The new owner went out to water the cattle and found a plank that the old farmer had set across the brook years before, to push a dark, ugly scum to one side so the cattle would drink.That scum was oil. For twenty-three years the farmer had been holding back, with his own plank, a flood of oil that the state’s experts later said was worth a hundred million dollars.He had studied oil until he knew all about it, yet he sold the land it lay under for eight hundred and thirty-three dollars.And so I say to you tonight: you have acres of diamonds right where you now live, if only you will look.”