Russell H Conwell’s classic Acres of Diamonds is the story of a farmer in Asia named Al Hafed, who heard about other farmers who made a fortune by discovering a diamond mine.
These stories so excited this particular farmer that he could hardly wait to sell his farm and begin searching for his own mine. He sold up and then spent the rest of his life wandering first the Asian then the European continents unsuccessfully searching for his dreams. Finally one day, broke, frustrated, in a fit of despondency, he threw himself from a cliff into the sea and drowned.
Meanwhile, the man who had bought the farm was walking through the property one day and he came across a large unusually shaped stone that later turned out to be a diamond of enormous value.
They later discovered that the farm was covered with these stones. In fact it became one of the world’s wealthiest diamond mines, the Golconda, from which came the great Kohinoor diamond that is part of the British crown jewels and the largest crown diamond on earth in the crown jewels of Russia.
The first farmer had owned acres of diamonds but had sold them for virtually nothing in order to look for them elsewhere. If only he had taken the time to study, to learn what diamonds looked like in their raw state and then thoroughly explored the land he already owned, he would have discovered the wealth he sought.
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