I am astonished that so many people should care to hear this story over again.  Indeed, this lecture has become a study in psychology; it often breaks all rules of oratory, departs from the precepts of rhetoric, and yet remains the most popular of any lecture I have delivered in the forty-four years of my public life.  I have sometimes studied for a year upon a lecture and made careful research, and then presented the lecture just once—­never delivered it again.  I put too much work on it.  But this had no work on it—­thrown together perfectly at random, spoken offhand without any special preparation, and it succeeds when the thing we study, work over, adjust to a plan is an entire failure.

The “Acres of Diamonds” which I have mentioned through so many years are to be found in Philadelphia, and you are to find them.  Many have found them.  And what man has done, man can do.  I could not find anything better to illustrate my thought than a story I have told over and over again, and which is now found in books in nearly every library.

In 1870 we went down the Tigris River.  We hired a guide at Bagdad to show us Persepolis, Nineveh and Babylon, and the ancient countries of Assyria as far as the Arabian Gulf.  He was well acquainted with the land, but he was one of those guides who love to entertain their patrons; he was like a barber that tells you many stories in order to keep your mind off the scratching and the scraping.  He told me so many stories that I grew tired of his telling them and I refused to listen—­looked away whenever he commenced; that made the guide quite angry, I remember that toward evening he took his Turkish cap off his head and swung it around in the air.  The gesture I did not understand and I did not dare look at him for fear I should become the victim of another story.  But, although I am not a woman, I did look, and the instant I turned my eyes upon that worthy guide he was off again.  Said he, “I will tell you a story now which I reserve for my particular friends!” So then, counting myself a particular friend, I listened, and I have always been glad I did.

He said there once lived not far from the River Indus an ancient Persian by the name of Al Hafed.  He said that Al Hafed owned a very large farm with orchards, grain fields and gardens.  He was a contented and wealthy man—­contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy because he was contented.  One day there visited this old farmer one of those ancient Buddhist priests, and he sat down by Al Hafed’s fire and told that old farmer how this world of ours was made.  He said that this world was once a mere bank of fog, which is scientifically true, and he said that the Almighty thrust his finger into the bank of fog and then began slowly to move his finger around and gradually to increase the speed of his finger until at last he whirled that bank of fog into a solid ball of fire, and it went rolling through the universe, burning its way through other cosmic banks