r. Conwell's most famous lecture and one of his earliest has been
given at this writing (October, 1905) 3420 times. The income from it
if invested at regular rates of interest would have amounted very
nearly to one million dollars.

PERSONAL GLIMPSES OF CELEBRATED MEN AND WOMEN

Is Dr. Conwell's latest lecture. It is a backward glance over his own
life in which he tells in his inimitable fashion many of its most
interesting scenes and incidents. It is here published for the first
time.

ACRES OF DIAMONDS.[A]

[Footnote A: Reported by A. Russell Smith and Harry E. Greager.]

[Mr. Conwell's lectures are all delivered extemporaneously and differ
greatly from night to night.--Ed.]

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