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 hadacres 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 wantedgold,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 yeas 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 tonight.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 running streams 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 ******tons 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 especial reference to my profession,and has no reference whatever 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 yearsbefore 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."
