Story 2

Three Feet From Gold

One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one overtaken by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another.

An uncle of R.U Darby was caught by the "gold fever" in the gold-rush days, and went west to DIG AND GROW RICH.

He had never heard that more gold has been mined from the brains of men than has ever been taken from the earth. He staked a claim and went to work with pick and shovel. The going was hard, but his lust for gold was definite.

After weeks of labour, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore. He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly, he covered up the mine, retraced his footsteps to his home in Williamsburg,maryland, told his relatives and a few neighbour of the "strike". They got together money for the needed machinery, had it shipped. The uncle and Darby went back to work the mine.

The first car of ore was mined, and shipped to a smelter. They returns proved thay had one of the richest mines in Colorado! A few more cars of that ore would clear the debts. Then would come the killing in profits.

Down went the drill! Up went the hopes of Darby and uncle! Then something happened! The vein of gold ore dissappeared! They had come to the end of the rainbow, and the pot of gold was no longer there! They drilled on desperately trying to pick up the vein again, all to no avail. Finally they decided to QUIT. They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars, then took the trian back home. Some "junk" men are dumb, but not this one. He called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer advised that the project had failed, because the owners were not familiar with ''fault lines''. His calculations showed that the vein would be found JUST THREE FEET FROM WHERE THE DARBYS HAD STOPPED DRILLING! That was exactly where it was found!

The "Junk" man took a million of dolars in ore from the mine, because he knew enough to seek the expert counsel before giving up. Most of the money which went into the machinery was procured thru the effort of R.U Darby, who was then a very young men. The money came from his relatives and neighbour because of faith in him. He paid back every dollar of it, although he was years in doing so. Long afterward, Mr Darby recouped his loss many times over, when he made the dicovery the DESIRE can be transmuted into gold. The discovery came after he went into the business of selling life insurance.

Remembering that he lost a huge fortune, because he STOPPED three feet from gold, Darby profited by the experience in his chosen work, by the simple method of saying to himself, "I stopped three feet from gold, but i will never stop because men say 'no' when I ask them to buy insurance".

Before success comes in any men's life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and perhaps some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is QUIT. That is exactly what the majority of men do.

More than five hundred of the most successful men in this country has ever known, told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them. Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping one when success is almost within reach.