er somewhere else. Several Brazilian shepherds organized a party to
go to California to dig gold, and took along a handful of clear pebbles
to play checkers with on the voyage. They discovered after arriving at
Sacramento, after they had thrown most of the pebbles away, that they
were all diamonds. They returned to Brazil only to find that the mines
had been taken up by others and sold to the government.

The richest gold and silver mine in Nevada was sold for forty-two
dollars by the owner, to get money to pay his passage to other mines
where he thought he could get rich.

Professor Agassiz told the Harvard students of a farmer who owned a farm
of hundreds of acres of unprofitable woods and rocks, and concluded to
sell out and try some more remunerative business.

He studied coal measures and coal oil deposits, and experimented for a
long time. He sold his farm for two hundred dollars and went into the
oil business two hundred miles away. Only a short time afterward the man
who bought the farm discovered a great flood of coal oil, which the
farmer had ignorantly tried to drain off.

A man was once sitting in an uncomfortable chair in Boston talking with
a friend as to what he could do to help mankind. "I should think it
would be a good thing," said the friend, "to begin by getting up an
easier and cheaper chair."

"I will do it," he exclaimed, leaping up and examining the chair. He
found a great deal of rattan thrown away by the East India merchant
ships, whose cargoes were wrapped in it. He began the manufacture of
rattan chairs and other furniture, and has astonished the world by what
he has done with what was before thrown away. While this man was
dreaming about some far off success, he at that very time had fortune
awaiting only his ingenuity and industry.

If you want to get rich, study yourself and your own wants. You will
find millions of others have the same wants, the same demands. The
safest business is always connected with men's prime necessities. They
must have clothing, dwellings; they must eat. They want comforts,
facilities of all kinds, for use and pleasure, luxury, education,
culture. Any man who can supply a great want of humanity, improve any
methods which men use, supply any demand or contribute in any way to
their well-being, can make a fortune.

But it is detrimental to the highest success to undertake anything
merely because it is profitable. If the vocation does not supply a human
want,