Massachusetts and went to Wisconsin, where he went into the
employ of the Superior Copper Mining Company, and he was lost from sight
in the employ of that company at fifteen dollars a week again. He was
also to have an interest in any mines that he should discover for that
company. But I do not believe that he has ever discovered a mine--I do
not know anything about it, but I do not believe he has. I know he had
scarcely gone from the old homestead before the farmer who had bought
the homestead went out to dig potatoes, and as he was bringing them in
in a large basket through the front gateway, the ends of the stone wall
came so near together at the gate that the basket hugged very tight. So
he set the basket on the ground and pulled, first on one side and then
on the other side. Our farms in Massachusetts are mostly stone walls,
and the farmers have to be economical with their gateways in order to
have some place to put the stones. That basket hugged so tight there
that as he was hauling it through he noticed in the upper stone next the
gate a block of native silver, eight inches square; and this professor
of mines and mining and mineralogy, who would not work for forty-five
dollars a week, when he sold that homestead in Massachusetts, sat right
on that stone to make the bargain. He was brought up there; he had gone
back and forth by that piece of silver, rubbed it with his sleeve, and
it seemed to say, "Come now, now, now, here is a hundred thousand
dollars. Why not take me?" But he would not take it. There was no silver
in Newburyport; it was all away off--well, I don't know where; he
didn't, but somewhere else--and he was a professor of mineralogy.

I do not know of anything I would enjoy better than to take the whole
time to-night telling of blunders like that I have heard professors
make. Yet I wish I knew what that man is doing out there in Wisconsin. I
can imagine him out there, as he sits by his fireside, and he is saying
to his friends, "Do you know that man Conwell that lives in
Philadelphia?" "Oh, yes, I have heard of him." "And do you know that man
Jones that lives in that city?" "Yes, I have heard of him." And then he
begins to laugh and laugh and says to his friends, "They have done the
same thing I did, precisely." And that spoils the whole joke, because
you and I have done it.

Ninety out of every hundred people here have made that mistake this very
day. I say you ought to be rich; you have no right to