, and the pin is now being manufactured. He
was offered fifty-five thousand dollars for his patent. That man
made his fortune before he got out of that hall. This is the whole
question: Do you see a need?

I remember well a man up in my native hills, a poor man, who for
twenty years was helped by the town in his poverty, who owned a
wide-spreading maple tree that covered the poor man's cottage like
a benediction from on high. I remember that tree, for in the
spring--there were some roguish boys around that neighborhood when I
was young--in the spring of the year the man would put a bucket there
and the spouts to catch the maple sap, and I remember where that
bucket was; and when I was young the boys were, oh, so mean, that
they went to that tree before than man had gotten out of bed in the
morning, and after he had gone to bed at night, and drank up that
sweet sap. I could swear they did it. He didn't make a great deal of
maple sugar from that tree. But one day he made the sugar so white
and crystaline that the visitor did not believe it was maple sugar;
thought maple sugar must be red or black. He said to the old man: "Why
don't you make it that way and sell it for confectionary?" The old man
caught his thought and invented the "rock maple crystal," and before
that patent expired he had ninety thousand dollars and had built a
beautiful palace on the site of that tree. After forty years owning
that tree he awoke to find it had fortunes of money indeed in it. And
many of us are right by the tree that has a fortune for us, and we own
it, possess it, do what we will with it, but we do not learn its value
because we do not see the human need, and in these discoveries, and
inventions this is one of the most romantic things of life.

I have received letters from all over the country and from England,
where I have lectured, saying that they have discovered this and that,
and one man out in Ohio took me through his great factories last
spring, and said that they cost him $680,000, and said he, "I was
not worth a cent in the world when I heard 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