rd your lecture 'Acres of Diamonds;' but I
made up my mind to stop right here and make my fortune here, and here it
is." He showed me through his unmortgaged possessions. And this is a
continual experience now as I travel through the country, after these
many years. I mention this incident, not to boast, but to show you that
you can do the same if you will.

Who are the great inventors? I remember a good illustration in a man who
used to live in East Brookfield, Mass. He was a shoemaker, and he was
out of work, and he sat around the house until his wife told him to "go
out doors." And he did what every husband is compelled by law to do--he
obeyed his wife. And he went out and sat down on an ash barrel in his
back yard. Think of it! Stranded on an ash barrel and the enemy in
possession of the house! As he sat on that ash barrel, he looked down
into that little brook which ran through that back yard into the
meadows, and he saw a little trout go flashing up the stream and hiding
under the bank. I do not suppose he thought of Tennyson's beautiful
poem:

"Chatter, chatter, as I flow,
To join the brimming river,
Men may come, and men may go,
But I go on forever."

But as this man looked into the brook, he leaped off that ash barrel and
managed to catch the trout with his fingers, and sent it to Worcester.
They wrote back that they would give him a five dollar bill for another
such trout as that, not that it was worth that much, but they wished to
help the poor man. So this shoemaker and his wife, now perfectly united,
that five dollar bill in prospect, went out to get another trout. They
went up the stream to its source and down to the brimming river, but not
another trout could they find in the whole stream; and so they came home
disconsolate and went to the minister. The minister didn't know how
trout grew, but he pointed the way. Said he, "Get Seth Green's book, and
that will give you the information you want." They did so, and found all
about the culture of trout. They found that a trout lays thirty-six
hundred eggs every year and every trout gains a quarter of a pound every
year, so that in four years a little trout will furnish four tons per
annum to sell to the market at fifty cents a pound. When they found
that, they said they didn't believe any such story as that, but if they
could get five dollars apiece they could make something. And right in
that same back yard with the coal sifter up s