章节正文
in this life again.
When that old guide had told me that awfully
sad story he stopped the camel I was riding on
and went back to fix the baggage that was coming
off another camel, and I had an opportunity to
muse over his story while he was gone. I remember
saying to myself, ``Why did he reserve that
story for his `particular friends'?'' There seemed
to be no beginning, no middle, no end, nothing
to it. That was the first story I had ever heard
told in my life, and would be the first one I ever
read, in which the hero was killed in the first
chapter. I had but one chapter of that story,
and the hero was dead.
When the guide came back and took up the
halter of my camel, he went right ahead with the
story, into the second chapter, just as though
there had been no break. 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 Hafed'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 in
to visit Ali Hafed's successor, and the moment
he opened that drawing-room door he saw that
flash of light on the mantel, and he rushed up
to it, and shouted: ``Here is a diamond! Has Ali
Hafed returned?'' ``Oh no, Ali Hafed has not
returned, and that is not a diamond. That is
nothing but a stone we found right out here in our
own garden.'' ``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, excelling the Kimberly
itself. The Kohinoor, and the Orloff of the crown
jewels of England and Russia, the largest on earth,
came from that mine.''
When that old Arab guide told me the second
chapter of his story, he then took off his Turkish
cap and swung it around in the air again to get
my attention to the moral. Those Arab guides
have morals to their stories, although they are
not always moral. As he swung his hat, he said
to me, ``Had Ali Hafed remained at home and dug
in his own cellar, or underneath his own wheat-
fields, or in his own garden, instead of wretchedness,
starvation, and death by suicide in a strange
land, he would have had `acres of diamonds.'
For every acre of that old farm, yes, every
shovelful, afterward revealed gems which since have
decorated the crowns of monarchs.''
When he had added the moral to his story I
saw why he reserved it for ``his particular friends.''
But I did not tell him I could see it. It was that
mean old Arab's way of going around a thing
like a lawyer, to say indirectly what he did not
dare say directly, that ``in his private opinion
there was a certain young man then traveling down
the Tigris River that might better be at home in
America.'' I did not tell him I could see that,
but I told him his story reminded me of one, and
I told it to him quick, and I think I will tell it to
you.
I told him of a man out in California in 1847
who owned a ranch. He heard they had discovered
gold in southern California, and so with a passion
for gold he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter, and
away he went, never to come back. Colonel
Sutter put a mill upon a stream that ran through
that ranch, and one day his little girl brought
some wet sand from the raceway into their home
and sifted it through her fingers before the fire,
and in that falling sand a visitor saw the first
shining scales of real gold that were ever discovered
in California. The man who had owned that
ranch wanted gold, and he could have secured it
for the mere taking. Indeed, thirty-eight millions
of dollars has been taken out of a very few acres
since then. About eight years ago I delivered
this lecture in a city that stands on that farm,
and they told me that a one-third owner for years
and years had been getting one hundred and
twenty dollars in gold every fifteen minutes,
sleeping or waking, without taxation. You and
I would enjoy an income like that--if we didn't
have to pay an income tax.
But a better illustration really than that
occurred here in our own Pennsylvania. If there
is anything I enjoy above another on the platform,
it is to get one of these German audiences
in Pennsylvania before me, and fire that at them,
and I enjoy it to-night. There was a man living
in Pennsylvania, not unlike some Pennsylvanians
you have seen, who owned a farm, and he did
with that farm just what I should do with a
farm if I owned one in Pennsylvania--he sold it.
But before he sold it he decided to secure employment
collecting coal-oil for his cousin, who was
in the business in Canada, where they first
discovered oil on this continent. They dipped it
from the runningstreams at that early time.
So this Pennsylvania farmer wrote to his cousin
asking for employment. You see, friends, this
farmer was not altogether a foolish man. No,
he was not. He did not leave his farm until he
had something else to do. _*Of all the simpletons
the stars shine on I don't know of a worse one than
the man who leaves one job before he has gotten
another_. That has especialreference to my
profession, and has no referencewhatever to a man
seeking a divorce. When he wrote to his cousin
for employment, his cousin replied, ``I cannot
engage you because you know nothing about the
oil business.''
Well, then the old farmer said, ``I will know,''
and with most commendable zeal (characteristic
of the students of Temple University) he set
himself at the study of the whole subject. He
began away back at the second day of God's
creation when this world was covered thick and
deep with that rich vegetation which since has
turned to the primitive beds of coal. He studied
the subject until he found that the drainings really
of those rich beds of coal furnished the coal-oil
that was worth pumping, and then he found how
it came up with the living springs. He studied
until he knew what it looked like, smelled like,
tasted like, and how to refine it. Now said he
in his letter to his cousin, ``I understand the oil
business.'' His cousin answered, ``All right,
come on.''
So he sold his farm, according to the county
record, for $833 (even money, ``no cents''). He
had scarcely gone from that place before the man
who purchased the spot went out to arrange for
the watering of the cattle. He found the previous
owner had gone out years before and put a plank
across the brook back of the barn, edgewise into
the surface of the water just a few inches. The
purpose of that plank at that sharp angle across
the brook was to throw over to the other bank a
dreadful-looking scum through which the cattle
would not put their noses. But with that plank
there to throw it all over to one side, the cattle
would drink below, and thus that man who had
gone to Canada had been himself damming back
for twenty-three years a flood of coal-oil which the
state geologists of Pennsylvania declared to us
ten years later was even then worth a hundred
millions of dollars to our state, and four years ago
our geologist declared the discovery to be worth
to our state a thousand millions of dollars. The
man who owned that territory on which the city
of Titusville now stands, and those Pleasantville
valleys, had studied the subject from the second
day of God's creation clear down to the present
time. He studied it until he knew all about it,
and yet he is said to have sold the whole of it
for $833, and again I say, ``no sense.''
But I need another illustration. I found it in
Massachusetts, and I am sorry I did because that
is the state 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,
When that old guide had told me that awfully
sad story he stopped the camel I was riding on
and went back to fix the baggage that was coming
off another camel, and I had an opportunity to
muse over his story while he was gone. I remember
saying to myself, ``Why did he reserve that
story for his `particular friends'?'' There seemed
to be no beginning, no middle, no end, nothing
to it. That was the first story I had ever heard
told in my life, and would be the first one I ever
read, in which the hero was killed in the first
chapter. I had but one chapter of that story,
and the hero was dead.
When the guide came back and took up the
halter of my camel, he went right ahead with the
story, into the second chapter, just as though
there had been no break. 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 Hafed'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 in
to visit Ali Hafed's successor, and the moment
he opened that drawing-room door he saw that
flash of light on the mantel, and he rushed up
to it, and shouted: ``Here is a diamond! Has Ali
Hafed returned?'' ``Oh no, Ali Hafed has not
returned, and that is not a diamond. That is
nothing but a stone we found right out here in our
own garden.'' ``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, excelling the Kimberly
itself. The Kohinoor, and the Orloff of the crown
jewels of England and Russia, the largest on earth,
came from that mine.''
When that old Arab guide told me the second
chapter of his story, he then took off his Turkish
cap and swung it around in the air again to get
my attention to the moral. Those Arab guides
have morals to their stories, although they are
not always moral. As he swung his hat, he said
to me, ``Had Ali Hafed remained at home and dug
in his own cellar, or underneath his own wheat-
fields, or in his own garden, instead of wretchedness,
starvation, and death by suicide in a strange
land, he would have had `acres of diamonds.'
For every acre of that old farm, yes, every
shovelful, afterward revealed gems which since have
decorated the crowns of monarchs.''
When he had added the moral to his story I
saw why he reserved it for ``his particular friends.''
But I did not tell him I could see it. It was that
mean old Arab's way of going around a thing
like a lawyer, to say indirectly what he did not
dare say directly, that ``in his private opinion
there was a certain young man then traveling down
the Tigris River that might better be at home in
America.'' I did not tell him I could see that,
but I told him his story reminded me of one, and
I told it to him quick, and I think I will tell it to
you.
I told him of a man out in California in 1847
who owned a ranch. He heard they had discovered
gold in southern California, and so with a passion
for gold he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter, and
away he went, never to come back. Colonel
Sutter put a mill upon a stream that ran through
that ranch, and one day his little girl brought
some wet sand from the raceway into their home
and sifted it through her fingers before the fire,
and in that falling sand a visitor saw the first
shining scales of real gold that were ever discovered
in California. The man who had owned that
ranch wanted gold, and he could have secured it
for the mere taking. Indeed, thirty-eight millions
of dollars has been taken out of a very few acres
since then. About eight years ago I delivered
this lecture in a city that stands on that farm,
and they told me that a one-third owner for years
and years had been getting one hundred and
twenty dollars in gold every fifteen minutes,
sleeping or waking, without taxation. You and
I would enjoy an income like that--if we didn't
have to pay an income tax.
But a better illustration really than that
occurred here in our own Pennsylvania. If there
is anything I enjoy above another on the platform,
it is to get one of these German audiences
in Pennsylvania before me, and fire that at them,
and I enjoy it to-night. There was a man living
in Pennsylvania, not unlike some Pennsylvanians
you have seen, who owned a farm, and he did
with that farm just what I should do with a
farm if I owned one in Pennsylvania--he sold it.
But before he sold it he decided to secure employment
collecting coal-oil for his cousin, who was
in the business in Canada, where they first
discovered oil on this continent. They dipped it
from the runningstreams at that early time.
So this Pennsylvania farmer wrote to his cousin
asking for employment. You see, friends, this
farmer was not altogether a foolish man. No,
he was not. He did not leave his farm until he
had something else to do. _*Of all the simpletons
the stars shine on I don't know of a worse one than
the man who leaves one job before he has gotten
another_. That has especialreference to my
profession, and has no referencewhatever to a man
seeking a divorce. When he wrote to his cousin
for employment, his cousin replied, ``I cannot
engage you because you know nothing about the
oil business.''
Well, then the old farmer said, ``I will know,''
and with most commendable zeal (characteristic
of the students of Temple University) he set
himself at the study of the whole subject. He
began away back at the second day of God's
creation when this world was covered thick and
deep with that rich vegetation which since has
turned to the primitive beds of coal. He studied
the subject until he found that the drainings really
of those rich beds of coal furnished the coal-oil
that was worth pumping, and then he found how
it came up with the living springs. He studied
until he knew what it looked like, smelled like,
tasted like, and how to refine it. Now said he
in his letter to his cousin, ``I understand the oil
business.'' His cousin answered, ``All right,
come on.''
So he sold his farm, according to the county
record, for $833 (even money, ``no cents''). He
had scarcely gone from that place before the man
who purchased the spot went out to arrange for
the watering of the cattle. He found the previous
owner had gone out years before and put a plank
across the brook back of the barn, edgewise into
the surface of the water just a few inches. The
purpose of that plank at that sharp angle across
the brook was to throw over to the other bank a
dreadful-looking scum through which the cattle
would not put their noses. But with that plank
there to throw it all over to one side, the cattle
would drink below, and thus that man who had
gone to Canada had been himself damming back
for twenty-three years a flood of coal-oil which the
state geologists of Pennsylvania declared to us
ten years later was even then worth a hundred
millions of dollars to our state, and four years ago
our geologist declared the discovery to be worth
to our state a thousand millions of dollars. The
man who owned that territory on which the city
of Titusville now stands, and those Pleasantville
valleys, had studied the subject from the second
day of God's creation clear down to the present
time. He studied it until he knew all about it,
and yet he is said to have sold the whole of it
for $833, and again I say, ``no sense.''
But I need another illustration. I found it in
Massachusetts, and I am sorry I did because that
is the state 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,
- beginning [bi´giniŋ]
n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词) - shallow [´ʃæləu] a.肤浅的；表面的 (初中英语单词)
- priest [pri:st] n.教士；牧师；神父 (初中英语单词)
- valuable [´væljuəbəl, -jubəl] a.有价值的，贵重的 (初中英语单词)
- magnificent [mæg´nifisənt] a.壮丽的；豪华的 (初中英语单词)
- cellar [´selə] n.地窑，地下室 (初中英语单词)
- underneath [,ʌndə´ni:θ] ad.&prep.在底下 (初中英语单词)
- lawyer [´lɔ:jə] n.律师；法学家 (初中英语单词)
- california [,kæli´fɔ:njə] n.加利福尼亚 (初中英语单词)
- stream [stri:m] n.河 vi.流出；飘扬 (初中英语单词)
- visitor [´vizitə] n.访问者；来宾；参观者 (初中英语单词)
- income [´inkʌm] n.收入，所得 (初中英语单词)
- illustration [,ilə´streiʃən] n.插图，图解，例证 (初中英语单词)
- unlike [,ʌn´laik] a.不同的 prep.不象... (初中英语单词)
- continent [´kɔntinənt] n.大陆，陆地 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- employment [im´plɔimənt] n.工作；职业；雇用 (初中英语单词)
- altogether [,ɔ:ltə´geðə] ad.完全；总而言之 (初中英语单词)
- reference [´refərəns] n.参考；参照；出处 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- divorce [di´vɔ:s] n.离婚 vt.同....离婚 (初中英语单词)
- temple [´tempəl] n.庙宇；寺院；太阳穴 (初中英语单词)
- primitive [´primitiv] a.原始的 n.原始人 (初中英语单词)
- creation [kri´eiʃən] n.创作；作品；创造 (初中英语单词)
- working [´wə:kiŋ] a.工人的；劳动的 (初中英语单词)
- baggage [´bægidʒ] n.行李 (高中英语单词)
- successor [sək´sesə] n.继承人，接班人 (高中英语单词)
- rainbow [´reinbəu] n.彩虹 (高中英语单词)
- pebble [´pebəl] n.卵石 v.(用卵石)铺 (高中英语单词)
- suicide [´su:isaid, ´sju:-] n.&a.自杀(者)(的) (高中英语单词)
- colonel [´kə:nəl] n.海(陆)军上校 (高中英语单词)
- taxation [tæk´seiʃən] n.征税；税制；税收 (高中英语单词)
- decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
- studied [´stʌdid] a.故意的；有计划的 (高中英语单词)
- mining [´mainiŋ] n.采矿；矿业 (高中英语单词)
- senior [´si:niə] a.年长的 n.前辈 (高中英语单词)
- vegetation [,vedʒi´teiʃən] n.植物；生长 (英语四级单词)
- refine [ri´fain] v.精炼；提纯；改进 (英语四级单词)
- immensely [i´mensli] ad.极大地，无限地 (英语四级单词)
- mantel [´mæntl] n.壁炉面饰；壁炉架 (英语六级单词)
- indirectly [,indi´rektli] a.间接地；迂回地 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- especial [i´speʃəl] a.特别的，特殊的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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