. 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 be poor. To
live in Philadelphia and not be rich is a misfortune, and it is doubly
a misfortune, because you could have been rich just as well as be
poor. Philadelphia furnishes so many opportunities. You ought to be
rich. But persons with certain religious prejudice will ask, "How can
you spend your time advising the rising generation to give their time
to getting money--dollars and cents--the